Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-03 Thread Daniel Peebles
That was actually my original motivation for doing this. I looked for the oldest GHC I could find (0.26) and it still wanted to be compiled by itself, although it said that HBC could do it if you put in more effort. I was hoping to get the binary bootstrapping out of the GHC build pipeline under

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-02 Thread Ganesh Sittampalam
On 31/08/2014 04:31, Daniel Peebles wrote: > I've had a sudden urge to do some Haskell archeology and that led me > to a question about how we feel "philosophically" about keeping > abandoned projects and old versions of live projects in nixpkgs. I > think it could be valuable to preserve importan

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-02 Thread Michael Raskin
>But with a proper database implementation, perhaps it can do full text >indexing on its description, or indexing on the names, and proper >caching mechanisms as well. > >Why reinvent the wheel? Because every package is a piece of code in Nix programming language.

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-02 Thread Roger Qiu
But with a proper database implementation, perhaps it can do full text indexing on its description, or indexing on the names, and proper caching mechanisms as well. Why reinvent the wheel? On 1/09/2014 3:04 PM, Michael Raskin wrote: >> Can there be a better database rather than a text file? > T

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-01 Thread Roger Qiu
I think the name and the attribute name could be named with better names, to prevent confusion. Perhaps a "label" and "path"/"fully qualified path". The name is just really used for fuzzy search which I believe is there for convenience for the operator. Like the difference between a search engi

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-01 Thread Roger Qiu
The CI system can support this process, every time a new package is built, its then triggers a reindex and mutation of the database, which is then supplied via the channel. On 1/09/2014 7:22 PM, Vladimír C(unát wrote: On 09/01/2014 11:24 AM, Michael Raskin wrote: What triggers reindexing? I

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-01 Thread Wout Mertens
Don't forget the nix-env -u case which updates based on name (in fact, that kinda sucks for sub-attributes like python packages, there are lots of attributes mapping to the same names). Wout. On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Florent Becker wrote: > > On 01/09/2014 11:22, Vladimír Čunát wrote:

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-01 Thread Florent Becker
On 01/09/2014 11:22, Vladimír Čunát wrote: > I suggest we distribute the database with the channel, similarly > to the command-not-found database. Can't command-not-found suggest using nix-env -iA rather than nix-env -i? That would be one indirection less for that use case, and teach new user

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-01 Thread Vladimír Čunát
On 09/01/2014 11:24 AM, Michael Raskin wrote: What triggers reindexing? I suggest we distribute the database with the channel, similarly to the command-not-found database. IMO it is mostly channel users that use installing by name, not developers who build from modified git tree. Vladimir

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-09-01 Thread Michael Raskin
>But with a proper database implementation, perhaps it can do full text >indexing on its description, or indexing on the names, and proper >caching mechanisms as well. > >Why reinvent the wheel? What triggers reindexing? Package name is a evaluated attribute, result of running a minimal expres

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-31 Thread Michael Raskin
>Can there be a better database rather than a text file? The problem is not about a _single_ text file; the problem is that you need to read some file specific to a package to find out its name, as opposed to its attribute name, I am pretty sure we don't want to mention package versions in all-p

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-31 Thread Roger Qiu
Can there be a better database rather than a text file? On 1/09/2014 4:04 AM, Michael Raskin wrote: >> On 31 August 2014 18:27, Michael Raskin <7c6f4...@mail.ru> wrote: >>> I'd say, though, that only name-based operations drop in performance >>> that way… >>> >>> Although for some strange reason w

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-31 Thread Michael Raskin
>On 31 August 2014 18:27, Michael Raskin <7c6f4...@mail.ru> wrote: >> I'd say, though, that only name-based operations drop in performance >> that way… >> >> Although for some strange reason we still recommend this way of using >> Nix. > >Nix newb asks: what would be the superiour alternative, then

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-31 Thread Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
On 31 August 2014 18:27, Michael Raskin <7c6f4...@mail.ru> wrote: > I'd say, though, that only name-based operations drop in performance > that way… > > Although for some strange reason we still recommend this way of using > Nix. Nix newb asks: what would be the superiour alternative, then? Regar

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-31 Thread Michael Raskin
>> How do people feel about this? Is it something I should maintain >> independently of nixpkgs or does it belong in the main repo? > >... please keep it out of the main Nixpkgs, at least for now. Reason >is that currently Nix performance drops linearly with the number of >packages. Until we have

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-31 Thread Ertugrul Söylemez
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 23:31:42 -0400 Daniel Peebles wrote: > I've had a sudden urge to do some Haskell archeology and that led me > to a question about how we feel "philosophically" about keeping > abandoned projects and old versions of live projects in nixpkgs. I think it's a very good idea, but

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-31 Thread Anderson Torres
Maybe a secondary git branch would be good to implement it. Em 31/08/2014 00:32, "Daniel Peebles" escreveu: > Hi all, > > I've had a sudden urge to do some Haskell archeology and that led me > to a question about how we feel "philosophically" about keeping > abandoned projects and old versions of

Re: [Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-30 Thread Nikita Karetnikov
> - NHC: can build it with HBC According to [1], it can be bootstrapped via C. If I remember correctly, I successfully built it this way in the past (outside of NixOS). > How do people feel about this? I think it’s a great idea. I always wanted to try HBI, which “supports the full language at

[Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

2014-08-30 Thread Daniel Peebles
Hi all, I've had a sudden urge to do some Haskell archeology and that led me to a question about how we feel "philosophically" about keeping abandoned projects and old versions of live projects in nixpkgs. I think it could be valuable to preserve important pieces of Haskell history (and perhaps ot