[solved]Need suggestions using third part pkg manager on nixos

1

I need a tool on rubygems which isn’t on nixpkgs, and it is not a lib or something for a project but for myself to help coding. It depends on some system libraries such as libxml. So I cannot install it simply by gem which complains about link error. What is the best way to do it? Must I write a overlay or custom package to build them? Or are there some simple way to make lib installed globally can be automatically added into link path or relative variables.

2

Can you tell us the name of the gem?

3

Not for a special gem,and not only for ruby. If I want to install a pkgs on npm, use npm or package it into nixpkgs? Or is there a better ways?
I want to manage all tools from a package manager in the same way, not some in nix and others in third part manager.

4

Well, I’m asking because the answer will be Ruby specific. See Nixpkgs 23.11 manual | Nix & NixOS for a bit more info, but it boils down to writing an expression that uses bundlerApp and a file generated from bundix.
The other option is to use a buildRubyGem derivation, but that won’t handle any dependencies automatically.

If you don’t want to actually package something for others, you probably want to use nix-shell. You can for example start with this:

with import <nixpkgs> {};
mkShell {
  buildInputs = [ libxml2 ruby bundler ];
}

And then either manually use nix-shell or something like http://direnv.net/ with a use nix directive to get a shell that has those dependencies. Then execute bundler inside of it.

Globally installing libraries is not something that works on NixOS, but using language-specific package managers inside of a nix-shell can work for most cases and is something I sometimes do for development as well.

1 Like
5

Thank you. I spend a day to read all document on nixos and wiki again. Now I know what I should do and why I should do.