Thanks for your detailed answer.
On 15 June 2014 02:28, Mateusz Kowalczyk <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 06/14/2014 11:17 PM, Andreas Herrmann wrote:
> > A) Is there some kind of test suite that I need to run on the expressions
> > before I can send a pull request? (I can build and use them...)
>
> Simply make sure it builds and runs on top of the current master. For
> Python, check multiple Python versions. nix-build can help you build the
> packages.
>
Okay, it runs on all python versions except pypy. Which is to be expected.
However, the pypy branch seems to be somewhat broken. The build failed at
setuptools long before it reached my package.
> > C2) The test-suite of pytables takes quite some time and has a number of
>
> failures of the "not-implemented" type. Is it worth including that
> > test-suite or should I just leave that one out?
>
> I would include any steps necessary to run the tests but after ensuring
> that the failures aren't NixOS/nix specific, I'd set doCheck = false:
> this makes it easier for you or someone else to turn on the tests on any
> future, fixed versions. Make sure to let the maintainer know that there
> are failing tests.
>
I dug a little deeper and found that the problem was actually rooted in the
hdf5 package. pytables needs it to be built with zlib. I put that in, and
also fixed the szip package. However, both could be called optional
dependencies on hdf5. Do you know, how I can make pytables depend on hdf5
with a certain set of parameters? Or are these things handled through
comments and documentation?
To be more explicit: say hdf5 has the parameters `{ stdenv, fetchurl, zlib
? null, szip ? null }`. How can I make pytables depend on hdf5 in such a
way, that it requires `zlib != null`, but doesn't care about `szip`?
> > D1) Pandas works without pytables. However, without it, it cannot
> > import/export hdf5 archives. Should I add PyTables as a dependency to
> > Pandas, or should every user individually add both to his environment if
> he
> > needs both? Or is there a way to make it an optional dependency?
>
> Optional dependencies are possible but I am unsure how they are done for
> Python packages. While I don't know how to specify such optional
> dependencies in python-packages.nix, you can simply create a
> nix-expression outside of it. See pkgs/games/anki/default.nix for an
> example of a Python package with optional dependencies. Provide a
> sensible default because only the default way will be built by Hydra.
>
> If you need Hydra to build the package in more ways then you should make
> two separate entries in all-packages.nix with the different flag setups
> but if there's only one common case then one should suffice.
>
I went to the pandas documentation and found out that they actually list
about a dozen optional dependencies. I came to the conclusion, that it is
probably easiest to not list them at all, since in the python world such a
dependency doesn't require re-building, but just availability in the module
search path. No reason to multiply the number of binaries if they end up
all being the same.
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