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<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id='sec-expression-syntax'>
<title>Expression Syntax</title>
<para>Here is a Nix expression for GNU Hello:</para>
<programlisting>
{ stdenv, fetchurl, perl }: ①
stdenv.mkDerivation { ②
name = "hello-2.1.1"; ③
builder = ./builder.sh; ④
src = fetchurl { ⑤
url = "ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/gnu/hello/hello-2.1.1.tar.gz";
sha256 = "1md7jsfd8pa45z73bz1kszpp01yw6x5ljkjk2hx7wl800any6465";
};
inherit perl; ⑥
}</programlisting>
<para>This file is actually already in the Nix Packages collection in
<filename>pkgs/applications/misc/hello/ex-1/default.nix</filename>.
It is customary to place each package in a separate directory and call
the single Nix expression in that directory
<filename>default.nix</filename>. The file has the following elements
(referenced from the figure by number):
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>This states that the expression is a
<emphasis>function</emphasis> that expects to be called with three
arguments: <varname>stdenv</varname>, <varname>fetchurl</varname>,
and <varname>perl</varname>. They are needed to build Hello, but
we don't know how to build them here; that's why they are function
arguments. <varname>stdenv</varname> is a package that is used
by almost all Nix Packages packages; it provides a
<quote>standard</quote> environment consisting of the things you
would expect in a basic Unix environment: a C/C++ compiler (GCC,
to be precise), the Bash shell, fundamental Unix tools such as
<command>cp</command>, <command>grep</command>,
<command>tar</command>, etc. <varname>fetchurl</varname> is a
function that downloads files. <varname>perl</varname> is the
Perl interpreter.</para>
<para>Nix functions generally have the form <literal>{ x, y, ...,
z }: e</literal> where <varname>x</varname>, <varname>y</varname>,
etc. are the names of the expected arguments, and where
<replaceable>e</replaceable> is the body of the function. So
here, the entire remainder of the file is the body of the
function; when given the required arguments, the body should
describe how to build an instance of the Hello package.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>So we have to build a package. Building something from
other stuff is called a <emphasis>derivation</emphasis> in Nix (as
opposed to sources, which are built by humans instead of
computers). We perform a derivation by calling
<varname>stdenv.mkDerivation</varname>.
<varname>mkDerivation</varname> is a function provided by
<varname>stdenv</varname> that builds a package from a set of
<emphasis>attributes</emphasis>. A set is just a list of
key/value pairs where each key is a string and each value is an
arbitrary Nix expression. They take the general form <literal>{
<replaceable>name1</replaceable> =
<replaceable>expr1</replaceable>; <replaceable>...</replaceable>
<replaceable>nameN</replaceable> =
<replaceable>exprN</replaceable>; }</literal>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The attribute <varname>name</varname> specifies the symbolic
name and version of the package. Nix doesn't really care about
these things, but they are used by for instance <command>nix-env
-q</command> to show a <quote>human-readable</quote> name for
packages. This attribute is required by
<varname>mkDerivation</varname>.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The attribute <varname>builder</varname> specifies the
builder. This attribute can sometimes be omitted, in which case
<varname>mkDerivation</varname> will fill in a default builder
(which does a <literal>configure; make; make install</literal>, in
essence). Hello is sufficiently simple that the default builder
would suffice, but in this case, we will show an actual builder
for educational purposes. The value
<command>./builder.sh</command> refers to the shell script shown
in <xref linkend='ex-hello-builder' />, discussed below.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>The builder has to know what the sources of the package
are. Here, the attribute <varname>src</varname> is bound to the
result of a call to the <command>fetchurl</command> function.
Given a URL and a SHA-256 hash of the expected contents of the file
at that URL, this function builds a derivation that downloads the
file and checks its hash. So the sources are a dependency that
like all other dependencies is built before Hello itself is
built.</para>
<para>Instead of <varname>src</varname> any other name could have
been used, and in fact there can be any number of sources (bound
to different attributes). However, <varname>src</varname> is
customary, and it's also expected by the default builder (which we
don't use in this example).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Since the derivation requires Perl, we have to pass the
value of the <varname>perl</varname> function argument to the
builder. All attributes in the set are actually passed as
environment variables to the builder, so declaring an attribute
<programlisting>
perl = perl;</programlisting>
will do the trick: it binds an attribute <varname>perl</varname>
to the function argument which also happens to be called
<varname>perl</varname>. However, it looks a bit silly, so there
is a shorter syntax. The <literal>inherit</literal> keyword
causes the specified attributes to be bound to whatever variables
with the same name happen to be in scope.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
</para>
</section>
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