Learning Journey tutorial - Packaging existing software

[zmitchell]

Project description

Migrating a project with an already working build system to a Nix-based workflow can be difficult. Doing a very basic derivation with runCommand or mkDerivation is covered in #599, but this follows the happy path of not having no dependencies at all outside of the native Rust build tools. This is not the reality for most developers working with Nix.

A more realistic scenario is that developers have a working project, set up a build using mkDerivation or some other simple builder, and immediately run into issues regarding missing dependencies. We'd like this tutorial to walk a user through that exact situation e.g. how do you find the dependencies that are missing, how do you know whether to use some_pkg vs. some_pkg.dev for missing headers or development libraries, how do you add platform-specific dependencies, etc.

Steps

• Submit a PR with an outline of the tutorial
• Submit a PR with a draft of the tutorial

Considerations

There's obviously many, many directions you could take this tutorial, so special care should be taken to keep the scope small and focus on the most common issues a new Nix user will struggle with when trying to build software with Nix.

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2023-06-19-tutorial-series-call-for-feedback-1/29377/1

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2023-06-22-learning-journey-working-group-meeting-notes-14/29490/1