[Nix-dev] cinnamon-settings-daemon will not compile

[Ben Franksen]

Vladimír Čunát wrote:
> On 04/08/2014 02:29 PM, Roelof Wobben wrote:
>> but when I do  nix-build -A cinnamon-settings-daeemon in the directory
>> which contains the nix file I get a message that default.nix cannot be
>> found.
> 
> Normally, you should call "nix-build" in the root of the nixpkgs tree,
> or supply the root by -f parameter. Also, you need "-A
> cinnamon.cinnamon-settings-daemon" to specify the attribute path.

I must say I find this part of the CLI a bit unfriendly. In everything I did 
with Nix until now I always used the same top-level Nix expression, 
currently this is ~/.nix-defexpr/channels/nixos-13.10/nixpkgs (which gets 
automatically created by nix-channel). I should probably make myself a shell 
alias

  alias nix-build='nix-build ~/.nix-defexpr/channels/nixos-13.10/nixpkgs'

The reason I always use the same top-level expression is that I do not (yet) 
want to make changes in the nixpkgs themselves. I do all my work under 
.nixpkgs (which I made a symlink to my real working dir where I keep my 
stuff under version control) (ab-)using .nixpkgs/config.nix to merge in my 
own packages:

ben at sarun[1]: ~ > ls .nixpkgs/
config.nix  epics
ben at sarun[1]: ~ > cat .nixpkgs/config.nix
{
  packageOverrides = pkgs: with pkgs; rec {
    epics_base = callPackage epics/base/full.nix { version = "3.14.12.4"; };
  ...
}

(If there is a simpler or more idiomatic way to achieve this, please tell 
me.)

Cheers
-- 
"Make it so they have to reboot after every typo." -- Scott Adams