Many ghc 7.6 packages don't build

[lucabrunox]

Many haskell packages are failing to build on hydra, and many are failing for the ghc 7.6 version.
It clutters a lot the list of failed builds in hydra, is it possible to fix or mark them as broken? @peti

[peti]

I'm all for cleaning up failing builds, but I cannot do it all by myself. We'd probably need to raise awareness of this issue to get other people to contribute to the effort.

[ocharles]

I'm interested in helping, but need to know "how" to help. What's the recommended course of action?

[ianclarksmith]

I've been trying to get into Nix over the last four days or so but haven't gotten very far since my intention was to try it out for Haskell development and haven't been able to get things running very well on darwin (specifically trouble building haddock and systemFileio, among others). I've been watching the haskell issue tag and commit log in case things change while I get up to speed with the rest of Nix, but I would also like to know what can be done to help. One thing I would like to know is if there are any specific examples of haskell package expressions which were not generated by cabal2nix, or which required manual edits to build properly.

A pretty consistent point of failure for me is the 'filesystem_tests' for system-fileio, reproduced here during an example build of git-annex-20140613:

Documentation created: dist/doc/html/system-fileio/index.html,
dist/doc/html/system-fileio/system-fileio.txt
Preprocessing test suite 'filesystem_tests' for system-fileio-0.3.14...
running tests
Running 1 test suites...
Test suite filesystem_tests: RUNNING...
[ ABORT ] posix.copyFile.iso8859
  Test aborted due to exception: /Users/ismith/tmp/nix-build-haskell-system-fileio-ghc7.6.3-0.3.14-profiling.drv-0/tests.iso8859.49584/old_¡¢£.txt: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

[ ABORT ] posix.withFile.read.iso8859
  Test aborted due to exception: /Users/ismith/tmp/nix-build-haskell-system-fileio-ghc7.6.3-0.3.14-profiling.drv-0/tests.read.iso8859.49584/¡¢£.txt: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

[ ABORT ] posix.withTextFile.iso8859
  Test aborted due to exception: /Users/ismith/tmp/nix-build-haskell-system-fileio-ghc7.6.3-0.3.14-profiling.drv-0/tests.iso8859.49584/¡¢£.txt: openFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

FAIL: 81 tests run, 66 tests passed, 12 tests skipped, 3 tests aborted
Test suite filesystem_tests: FAIL
Test suite logged to: dist/test/system-fileio-0.3.14-filesystem_tests.log
0 of 1 test suites (0 of 1 test cases) passed.
builder for `/nix/store/bj378nsk55qifp8dj7zgs9y0609a8sbn-haskell-system-fileio-ghc7.6.3-0.3.14-profiling.drv' failed with exit code 1
fetching path `/nix/store/7lsnjy9wrm7wph4gnz1k0q8cw2z6004l-haskell-base16-bytestring-ghc7.6.3-0.1.1.6-profiling'...
cannot build derivation `/nix/store/qxsdr367kam1wpvlj13bcqd94ig8gwgb-haskell-yesod-static-ghc7.6.3-1.2.4-profiling.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
killing process 49586
cannot build derivation `/nix/store/4qlakbzanjy8p264cmmqb2sbw4cvlsjv-git-annex-5.20140613.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
error: build of `/nix/store/4qlakbzanjy8p264cmmqb2sbw4cvlsjv-git-annex-5.20140613.drv' failed

If this isn't considered relevant I'll be happy to create a separate issue (or not) while I get better acquainted with the Nix system.

[peti]

Maybe we should organize a Haskell bug-fixing hackathon? We agree on some time, preferably on the weekend, and then everyone who can manage shows up on #nixos so that we can talk and coordinate. Then we go through all known issues, and fix as many of them as possible. In SCRUM terminology, this would be called a "sprint" I suppose. It's very effective, because we can bring everyone who has a stake in these issues together to talk.

[peti]

This topic has moved to the nix-dev mailing list. Please re-open if you have a concrete suggestion that's more appropriate for this forum, otherwise please participate in the -dev discussion!

[jml]

I've filed #3540 for the specific issue reported by ianclarksmith (which also affects me, and is how I found this ticket).

http://lists.science.uu.nl/pipermail/nix-dev/2014-August/013845.html links to the start of the mailing list thread.