[Nix-dev] Debugging nixpkgs

[Konrad Hinsen]

Michael Raskin writes:

 > Changes to NixPkgs tree do not affect the packages built from it; and it
 > is version-controlled, so you can revert if you make a mistake. 
 > 
 > nix-call-package script allows me to test most of the new packages 
 > without adding them to all-packages.nix
 > 
 > I don't install anything in profiles; I use systemPackages for some 
 > things and direct "nix-build -o something " for others; obviously,
 > testing is done with nix-build.

nix-build is exactly what I was looking for, among others. Thanks!

I found nix-call-package in maintainers/scripts but I can't say I have figured
out yet what it does.


Florian Friesdorf writes:

 > I manage the repositories with git svn and just to add new or update
 > existing expressions I use them directly.
 > 
 > /etc/nixos/nixpkgs is linked to ~/.nix-defexpr/nixpkgs_sys, which seems
 > to be default on nixos, though I wonder whether the nixpkgs_sys could be
 > changed to something shorter, however, the pain was not big enough to
 > investigate yet.
 > 
 > For more experimental stuff (like the python rework currently living at
 > https://github.com/chaoflow/nixpkgs) I have another checkout/branch of
 > nixpkgs linked to ~/.nix-defexpr/py.

That looks like an interesting way to work with several versions of nixpkgs.
My envisaged use case is a bit different (use nixpkgs in parallel with a
personal and application-specific set of package definitions), but I should be
able to use the same approach.

Thanks to both of you,
  Konrad.