Request for new package: haskell-ide-engine

[romildo]

Issue description

I would like to have haskell-ide-engine (HIE) added to nixpkgs, but I fear I am not knowledgeable enough to add it myself.

The Haskell IDE Engine is described in its home page by the following:

This project aims to be the universal interface to a growing number of Haskell tools, providing a full-featured and easy to query backend for editors and IDEs that require Haskell-specific functionality.

It is a requirement for Haskell development in Visual Studio Code using the extension Haskell Language Server, whose repository is Haskell Language Server Client.

[roberth]

@robinvd seems to have packaged haskell-ide-engine independently in https://github.com/robinvd/robinpkgs/tree/master/haskell-ide-engine. The last commit is only 24 days old and I have checked that it builds successfully against the NixOS unstable channel. That repo contains expressions referencing <nixpkgs>. It is not a nixpkgs fork or overlay.

Packaging it is not trivial because a number of packages / package versions is not on hackage, so we may need to consider all options to make installation easier:

• Turn @robinvd's work into a proper overlay. I can help with that.
• Remove vendored source code from that repo
• Upstream everything his work into the haskell-ide-engine megarepo (if maintainers agree)
• Integrate it into nixpkgs (which is what this issue is about)
• Something else

It would be very nice to have hie in nixpkgs itself, so it can be discovered and used easily, so that should be the goal here.
@robinvd, how was your experience packaging hie? Do you think it would be a burden on nixpkgs?

[robinvd]

@roberth i tried only putting only .nix files in the repo, but the repo has sub packages. When nix tries to build those the licence file is in ../LICENSE and nix does not accept that (since only the sub package is copied into the nix store).

We would need a patch for coping the licence file and changing the .cabal files or make a pull request in the hie project

@robinvd, how was your experience packaging hie? Do you think it would be a burden on nixpkgs?

it was not difficult, for almost all my big haskell projects i make an out of tree nixpkgs like this one.

I had to run cabal2nix on every subpackage. Only thing is they use specific versions of dependencies (in the stack file you can see this). So i had to make a nix file based on the specific commit. Does nixpkgs allow non newest package dependencies?

I don't know if nixpkgs likes it if the tests are disabled, but multiple packages failed on the tests so i just wrapped everypackage in notest (also builds faster).

Upstream everything his work into the haskell-ide-engine megarepo (if maintainers agree)
Integrate it into nixpkgs (which is what this issue is about)

I like one of these options the best (or both). I can have a look at a patch for the license or make an issue at hie repo this weekend. I have no experiance with nixpkgs but would love to make a contribution to my daily OS that i use on all my devices.

@romildo if you want to build it right now you can: clone my repo and build it with nix-build default.nix -A haskell-ide-engine or add it to your nix-channel's (the channel url is https://github.com/robinvd/robinpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz). And then do nix-env -i haskell-ide-engine

[mrkgnao]

I can confirm that @robinvd's package works fine.

[romildo]

It is not building on my unstable NixOS system:

$ nix-build default.nix -A haskell-ide-engine
[...]
Configuring brittany-0.8.0.3...
Setup: Encountered missing dependencies:
butcher >=1.1.0.0 && <1.2
checking for references to /tmp/nix-build-apply-refact-0.3.0.1.drv-0 in /nix/store/w9sr38x7m3bl5chij6j151dmlwnm0h2y-apply-refact-0.3.0.1...
builder for ‘/nix/store/jxb1653blsc1a161jkykyqj71xym5z8j-brittany-0.8.0.3.drv’ failed with exit code 1
cannot build derivation ‘/nix/store/9jm643sv3xw1hfp1mkkzmfa31zypk1ry-hie-brittany-0.1.0.0.drv’: 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation ‘/nix/store/i4lr2z9hwfbc28lxzy825wrbind7p11m-haskell-ide-engine-0.1.0.0.drv’: 1 dependencies couldn't be built
error: build of ‘/nix/store/i4lr2z9hwfbc28lxzy825wrbind7p11m-haskell-ide-engine-0.1.0.0.drv’ failed

[robinvd]

i came across a newer version of the same we are trying to do: haskell/haskell-ide-engine#117 (comment). @romildo maybe this builds on unstable?

[domenkozar]

See haskell/haskell-ide-engine#117 (comment)