Hello, http://nix.cs.uu.nl/index.html "Nix is a purely functional package manager. This means that it treats packages like values in purely functional programming languages such as Haskell - they are built by functions that don't have side-effects, and they never change after they have been built." To me, it sounds like the ideal solution to package/make/build management in general and Cabal/Hackage/Cabal-install in particular. After all, compilation is just a _pure_ function compile :: Source -> Dependencies -> Object So, the suggestion is to use Nix for Hackage/Cabal. This way, we get package installation/deinstallation for free. I didn't look into it, but it seems that the package description language can express most content from .cabal files and I guess that it even eliminates the need for most of Cabal's functionality like finding compilers and such. The only drawback is that Nix uses a home-brew functional language for package descriptions. Of course, it would be ideal to have a Haskell DSL for that :) Regards, apfelmus
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 16:47 +0200, apfelmus wrote:
Hello,
http://nix.cs.uu.nl/index.html
"Nix is a purely functional package manager. This means that it treats packages like values in purely functional programming languages such as Haskell - they are built by functions that don't have side-effects, and they never change after they have been built."
To me, it sounds like the ideal solution to package/make/build management in general and Cabal/Hackage/Cabal-install in particular. After all, compilation is just a _pure_ function
compile :: Source -> Dependencies -> Object
So, the suggestion is to use Nix for Hackage/Cabal. This way, we get package installation/deinstallation for free. I didn't look into it, but it seems that the package description language can express most content from .cabal files and I guess that it even eliminates the need for most of Cabal's functionality like finding compilers and such.
I was under the impression that it didn't work on Windows. From another quick look at the website, it looks like that's right. Does anybody happen to know otherwise? Duncan
Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 16:47 +0200, apfelmus wrote:
I was under the impression that it didn't work on Windows. From another quick look at the website, it looks like that's right. Does anybody happen to know otherwise?
I have no idea, but the manual states "E.2. Release 0.10 (October 6, 2006) [...] - Added support for Cygwin (Windows, i686-cygwin), Mac OS X on Intel (i686-darwin) and Linux on PowerPC (powerpc-linux)" Regards, apfelmus
Hello apfelmus, Friday, July 6, 2007, 8:19:58 PM, you wrote: >> I was under the impression that it didn't work on Windows. From another > - Added support for Cygwin (Windows, i686-cygwin), Mac OS X on Intel cygwin isn't windows, it's backdoors :)))) -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
On 7/6/07, apfelmus
Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 16:47 +0200, apfelmus wrote:
I was under the impression that it didn't work on Windows. From another quick look at the website, it looks like that's right. Does anybody happen to know otherwise?
I have no idea, but the manual states
"E.2. Release 0.10 (October 6, 2006) [...] - Added support for Cygwin (Windows, i686-cygwin), Mac OS X on Intel (i686-darwin) and Linux on PowerPC (powerpc-linux)"
Cygwin support might mean that native Windows support is still miles away, if possible at all, and assuming Cygwin is a huge leap. Best regards, Esa
If that means I have to have cygwin installed to use the installation tools
thats not only a show stopper, but against the direction ghc took in the
past to become independend of cygwin.
----- Original Message -----
From: "apfelmus"
Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 16:47 +0200, apfelmus wrote:
I was under the impression that it didn't work on Windows. From another quick look at the website, it looks like that's right. Does anybody happen to know otherwise?
I have no idea, but the manual states
"E.2. Release 0.10 (October 6, 2006) [...] - Added support for Cygwin (Windows, i686-cygwin), Mac OS X on Intel (i686-darwin) and Linux on PowerPC (powerpc-linux)"
Regards, apfelmus
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
On 6-jul-2007, at 18:08, Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 16:47 +0200, apfelmus wrote:
Hello,
http://nix.cs.uu.nl/index.html
"Nix is a purely functional package manager. This means that it treats packages like values in purely functional programming languages such as Haskell - they are built by functions that don't have side- effects, and they never change after they have been built."
To me, it sounds like the ideal solution to package/make/build management in general and Cabal/Hackage/Cabal-install in particular. After all, compilation is just a _pure_ function
compile :: Source -> Dependencies -> Object
So, the suggestion is to use Nix for Hackage/Cabal. This way, we get package installation/deinstallation for free. I didn't look into it, but it seems that the package description language can express most content from .cabal files and I guess that it even eliminates the need for most of Cabal's functionality like finding compilers and such.
I was under the impression that it didn't work on Windows. From another quick look at the website, it looks like that's right. Does anybody happen to know otherwise?
It does in fact work under Windows. However, it currently depends on cygwin for most of its building infrastructure. This is not fundamental to the system, fortunately. There is just too little manpower behind it to lift it from its Linuxy start... Oh, and Daan Leijen seems to have written something about the same subject for some reason or another. With regards, Arthur van Leeuwen. (Who has forwarded the initial mail to Eelco Dolstra, designer of Nix, to see if he wants to chime in) -- /\ / | arthurvl@cs.uu.nl | Work like you don't need the money /__\ / | A friend is someone with whom | Love like you have never been hurt / \/__ | you can dare to be yourself | Dance like there's nobody watching
of Cabal's functionality like finding compilers and such. I was under the impression that it didn't work on Windows. From another quick look at the website, it looks like that's right. Does anybody happen to know otherwise?
It actually does. I've managed to compile it. You have one major problem when trying to install nix from source on windows: You need another lex/ bison version. I've already proposed adding the parser files to the svn repository so that this problem would be gone. I didn't check that this already has happened. GHC is not yet supported on windows. But adding the binary installer shouldn't be hard. On windows there are some minor quirks with symlinks. And you need NTFS (fat32 doesn't work).. each package description (it's called derivation) has an property builder. This is a script which sources another basch script defining default targets (unpack, build, ...). But you can specify any other executable to do the build task. Beeing totally pure means also that you have to download a lot of packages more than once (linux header files glibc etc ...) Because nix won't use the ones beeing installed by your system. This doesn't matter as you can use NixOs. I think more than one developper is using NixOS as main os. But you will have to hack a lot to get what you already have.. (I think. I haven't tried yet).. I'm currently working on moving all hackagedb packages to nix with automatic dependency resolving. I already have list of package descriptions from the hackage site which looks roughly like this (thus each package chooses which dependencies it needs by selector functions filtering the whole hackage package list by itself..) <start list> ({ cabaldeps=[ ({descr="base"; filter_func=d : ("base" == d.id.name);}) ({descr="parsec"; filter_func=d : ("parsec" == d.id.name);}) ({descr="mtl"; filter_func=d : ("mtl" == d.id.name);}) ({descr="template-haskell"; filter_func=d : ("template_haskell" == d.id.name);}) ]; name="harpy"; src="http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/harpy/0.2/harpy-0.2.tar.gz"; version=[(0) (2) ]; }) .... <end list> The cool thing: You can not only automatically download/ compile dependencies but also distribute the packages and update by automatically generated binary diffs (you should read the nix manual to get more accurate information because I still feel like a noob). I'll post another message to the nix dev list so that the main developpers can give a more accurate status report if they wish. Marc Weber
participants (7)
-
Andreas Marth -
apfelmus -
Arthur van Leeuwen -
Bulat Ziganshin -
Duncan Coutts -
Esa Ilari Vuokko -
Marc Weber