Description

A collection of WIP Nix Package Manager build expressions for opencog packages.

Usage

cd <package-name> # e.g. cogutil
nix-shell # --run 'zsh'

This will build the expression dependencies, place you in that shell and run code under shellHook.

Updating

Automatic update

To update all packages run nix-shell auto-update.nix from packages folder. To update only some, open auto-update.nix and pass package names as parameters to update_opencog_repos, then run the above. This will fetch the latest master revision and its sha256 and update packages/*.nix files. You can then try to build them.

Manual update

Open packages/<package>.nix and update rev with a commit hash, as well as sha256. If sha256 is not changed, nix will use the old build version if any without throwing an error. To get the sha256 quickly, I change one numerical value from sha256, start the build and copy-paste the expected sha256 output from the error message.

Adding packages

To add a package, take a similar structure to one of the existing packages. Read the README.md of the package and add all required dependencies to buildInputs. Search for dependencies package attribute names on NixOS packages There might be more dependencies, you will know if the build fails.

Patching the source will most likely be required for overridings of GUILE_LOAD_PATH and PYTHONPATH in CmakeLists.txt files, any hardcoded path like /usr/local/share/..., hardcoded binary names that differ on nixos or some other exceptions. See helpers/common-patch.nix.

Debugging

Calling nix-shell builds the expression dependencies and places you in a shell that has them. If nix-shell <package>/default.nix fails you can debug the failing package directly with its expression, located in packages/<package>.nix, something like:

rm -rf ./source # cleanup previous build
nix-shell ../path/to/packages/<package>.nix --pure # --pure is almost pure, still loads .bashrc and stuff

If the patchPhase requires writting to $out which is read-only and possible only with nixbld instead of nix-shell, a custom $out and $prefix can be set: export out=$(mktemp -d); export prefix=$out; genericBuild

After changing the .nix make sure to exit the shell if inside and repeat the above to load up the new updated expression.

Once inside the shell:

source directory will be created, with build directory inside.
You can call all stages by hand, like genericBuild. Call type genericBuild to see its code.
When something fails, you will still be in the shell and can change files and retry calling a certain phase.
before retrying a phase,cd back to the appropriate folder like build or other folders might be created nested.
You can change the source files like .cxxtest or .cpp tests and call checkPhase from build folder.
To get verbose output of tests go to the source/build/tests and call ctest --verbose # -V.
Target specific tests with ctest --tests-regex # -R
To get debug output prepend logger().set_level(Logger::DEBUG); logger().set_print_to_stdout_flag(true); to target code.
After fix is made, add it to the packages/.nix and retry nix-shell with /default.nix

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0

opencog / opencog-nix