Curl | sh as flake

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1

there is a common idiom to install software like this:

curl some.url/install.sh | sh

I am aware of the security issues and general flaws.

Anyways, what is the best way to package such a software?
I am generally new to packaging things and would love to learn it for once.

Specifically, I want to package https://ollama.ai

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2

You have to read the install script and create a package based on that

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3

For ollama, you can see from https://github.com/jmorganca/ollama/blob/325cfcd9ffa8c5e19c7258471a864dcd8508d49a/docs/linux.md that it can be installed by downloading a binary and putting that binary in the right directory. So something like the derivation below should work for a quick trial. (But it’s probably better to try and build it from source.)

{ fetchurl, lib, stdenv, autoPatchelfHook }:

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  pname = "ollama";
  version = "0.1"; #Change this!
  src = fetchurl {
    url = "https://ollama.ai/download/ollama-linux-amd64";
    hash = "sha256-WxRimPMHV2qbePUu9EVniApXy2NrLK97LsXO+Burdkk=";
  };

  nativeBuildInputs = [
    autoPatchelfHook
  ];

  dontUnpack = true;
  dontBuild = true;
  dontConfigure = true;

  installPhase = ''
    mkdir -p $out/bin
    install -m755 -D $src $out/bin/ollama
  '';

  meta = with lib; {
    homepage = "https://ollama.ai/";
    description = "Enter Something Here";
    platforms = platforms.linux;
  };
}

You may have to add some libraries to buildInputs, though. For packaging binaries, you can also consult this: Packaging/Binaries - NixOS Wiki

2 Likes
4

Thank you very much, I finally understand how the packaging works.

Sadly for this specific project someone else was faster to create a package for ollama.

5

It might still be useful to create an ollama-bin package, though! As you can see in this update request, it is sometimes difficult to build a project properly, which can delay updates. Having a binary package that doesn’t use nix to build the program but just ships the exact binary that the maintainer built can be useful as a workaround in such cases. Additionally, it can be helpful when debugging problems in the from-source package by comparing its behavior to the binary package.

So if you want to still have a go at this, feel free to do so!

1 Like
6

Thanks for the encouragement, this is the first thing I have contributed to nixpkgs. I have issued a PR for what I had (ollama-bin). Awaiting review.

7

Speaking of ollama, as I wanted to try this soon. I believe the binary package does not come with support for AMD ROCm built it. I think it would be nice, at least for me, to have an ollama-rocm version ready as well.

Edit: Could you @maixnor link your PR maybe?

8

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/266586

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