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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xml:id="chap-language-support">
<title>Support for specific programming languages</title>
<para>The <link linkend="chap-stdenv">standard build
environment</link> makes it easy to build typical Autotools-based
packages with very little code. Any other kind of package can be
accomodated by overriding the appropriate phases of
<literal>stdenv</literal>. However, there are specialised functions
in Nixpkgs to easily build packages for other programming languages,
such as Perl or Haskell. These are described in this chapter.</para>
<section xml:id="ssec-language-perl"><title>Perl</title>
<para>Nixpkgs provides a function <varname>buildPerlPackage</varname>,
a generic package builder function for any Perl package that has a
standard <varname>Makefile.PL</varname>. Its implemented in <link
xlink:href="https://svn.nixos.org/repos/nix/nixpkgs/trunk/pkgs/development/perl-modules/generic"><filename>pkgs/development/perl-modules/generic</filename></link>.</para>
<para>Perl packages from CPAN are defined in <link
xlink:href="https://svn.nixos.org/repos/nix/nixpkgs/trunk/pkgs/top-level/perl-packages.nix"><filename>pkgs/perl-packages.nix</filename></link>,
rather than <filename>pkgs/all-packages.nix</filename>. Most Perl
packages are so straight-forward to build that they are defined here
directly, rather than having a separate function for each package
called from <filename>perl-packages.nix</filename>. However, more
complicated packages should be put in a separate file, typically in
<filename>pkgs/development/perl-modules</filename>. Here is an
example of the former:
<programlisting>
ClassC3 = buildPerlPackage rec {
name = "Class-C3-0.21";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://cpan/authors/id/F/FL/FLORA/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "1bl8z095y4js66pwxnm7s853pi9czala4sqc743fdlnk27kq94gz";
};
};
</programlisting>
Note the use of <literal>mirror://cpan/</literal>, and the
<literal>${name}</literal> in the URL definition to ensure that the
name attribute is consistent with the source that were actually
downloading. Perl packages are made available in
<filename>all-packages.nix</filename> through the variable
<varname>perlPackages</varname>. For instance, if you have a package
that needs <varname>ClassC3</varname>, you would typically write
<programlisting>
foo = import ../path/to/foo.nix {
inherit stdenv fetchurl ...;
inherit (perlPackages) ClassC3;
};
</programlisting>
in <filename>all-packages.nix</filename>. You can test building a
Perl package as follows:
<screen>
$ nix-build -A perlPackages.ClassC3
</screen>
<varname>buildPerlPackage</varname> adds <literal>perl-</literal> to
the start of the name attribute, so the package above is actually
called <literal>perl-Class-C3-0.21</literal>. So to install it, you
can say:
<screen>
$ nix-env -i perl-Class-C3
</screen>
(Of course you can also install using the attribute name:
<literal>nix-env -i -A perlPackages.ClassC3</literal>.)</para>
<para>So what does <varname>buildPerlPackage</varname> do? It does
the following:
<orderedlist>
<listitem><para>In the configure phase, it calls <literal>perl
Makefile.PL</literal> to generate a Makefile. You can set the
variable <varname>makeMakerFlags</varname> to pass flags to
<filename>Makefile.PL</filename></para></listitem>
<listitem><para>It adds the contents of the <envar>PERL5LIB</envar>
environment variable to <literal>#! .../bin/perl</literal> line of
Perl scripts as <literal>-I<replaceable>dir</replaceable></literal>
flags. This ensures that a script can find its
dependencies.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>In the fixup phase, it writes the propagated build
inputs (<varname>propagatedBuildInputs</varname>) to the file
<filename>$out/nix-support/propagated-user-env-packages</filename>.
<command>nix-env</command> recursively installs all packages listed
in this file when you install a package that has it. This ensures
that a Perl package can find its dependencies.</para></listitem>
</orderedlist>
</para>
<para><varname>buildPerlPackage</varname> is built on top of
<varname>stdenv</varname>, so everything can be customised in the
usual way. For instance, the <literal>BerkeleyDB</literal> module has
a <varname>preConfigure</varname> hook to generate a configuration
file used by <filename>Makefile.PL</filename>:
<programlisting>
{buildPerlPackage, fetchurl, db4}:
buildPerlPackage rec {
name = "BerkeleyDB-0.36";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://cpan/authors/id/P/PM/PMQS/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "07xf50riarb60l1h6m2dqmql8q5dij619712fsgw7ach04d8g3z1";
};
preConfigure = ''
echo "LIB = ${db4}/lib" > config.in
echo "INCLUDE = ${db4}/include" >> config.in
'';
}
</programlisting>
</para>
<para>Dependencies on other Perl packages can be specified in the
<varname>buildInputs</varname> and
<varname>propagatedBuildInputs</varname> attributes. If something is
exclusively a build-time dependency, use
<varname>buildInputs</varname>; if its (also) a runtime dependency,
use <varname>propagatedBuildInputs</varname>. For instance, this
builds a Perl module that has runtime dependencies on a bunch of other
modules:
<programlisting>
ClassC3Componentised = buildPerlPackage rec {
name = "Class-C3-Componentised-1.0004";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://cpan/authors/id/A/AS/ASH/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0xql73jkcdbq4q9m0b0rnca6nrlvf5hyzy8is0crdk65bynvs8q1";
};
propagatedBuildInputs = [
ClassC3 ClassInspector TestException MROCompat
];
};
</programlisting>
</para>
</section>
<section><title>Python</title>
<para>
Python packages that
use <link xlink:href="http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools/"><literal>setuptools</literal></link>,
which many Python packages do nowadays, can be built very simply using
the <varname>buildPythonPackage</varname> function. This function is
implemented
in <link xlink:href="https://svn.nixos.org/repos/nix/nixpkgs/trunk/pkgs/development/python-modules/generic/default.nix"><filename>pkgs/development/python-modules/generic/default.nix</filename></link>
and works similarly to <varname>buildPerlPackage</varname>. (See
<xref linkend="ssec-language-perl"/> for details.)
</para>
<para>
Python packages that use <varname>buildPythonPackage</varname> are
defined
in <link xlink:href="https://svn.nixos.org/repos/nix/nixpkgs/trunk/pkgs/top-level/python-packages.nix"><filename>pkgs/top-level/python-packages.nix</filename></link>.
Most of them are simple. For example:
<programlisting>
twisted = buildPythonPackage {
name = "twisted-8.1.0";
src = fetchurl {
url = http://tmrc.mit.edu/mirror/twisted/Twisted/8.1/Twisted-8.1.0.tar.bz2;
sha256 = "0q25zbr4xzknaghha72mq57kh53qw1bf8csgp63pm9sfi72qhirl";
};
propagatedBuildInputs = [ pkgs.ZopeInterface ];
meta = {
homepage = http://twistedmatrix.com/;
description = "Twisted, an event-driven networking engine written in Python";
license = "MIT";
};
};
</programlisting>
</para>
</section>
<!--
<section><title>Haskell</title>
<para>TODO</para>
</section>
<section><title>Java</title>
<para>TODO; Java support needs lots of improvement</para>
</section>
<section><title>TeX / LaTeX</title>
<para>* Special support for building TeX documents</para>
</section>
-->
</chapter>