Fails to link against tinfo (ncurses5)

[nomeata]

I am trying to build https://travis-ci.org/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/ statically using these instructions, and I made good progress by pinning nixpkgs to version NixOS/nixpkgs@2c07921 (which is the one mentioned in the README) and then buliding pkgs.pkgsMusl.haskell.packages.ghc843.tttool.

And indeed, as long as I stub out uses of TemplateHaskell in my program (it it expected that this is needed?), it builds… almost: It fails linking

Linking dist/build/tttool/tttool ...
/nix/store/3a74d03pq6d0cg3crkfw965k5s58hbn4-binutils-2.30/bin/ld: cannot find -ltinfo
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
`cc' failed in phase `Linker'. (Exit code: 1)
builder for '/nix/store/4z8hp5bslaxlgasq69k4njxl2z1hnwz2-tttool-1.8.1.drv' failed with exit code 1
error: build of '/nix/store/4z8hp5bslaxlgasq69k4njxl2z1hnwz2-tttool-1.8.1.drv' failed

Blindly cargo-culting the example scotty app, I tried adding the following to my project.nix

  configureFlags = pkgs.lib.optional static [
     "--ghc-option=-optl=-static"
     "--extra-lib-dirs=${pkgs.gmp6.override { withStatic = true; }}/lib"
     "--extra-lib-dirs=${pkgs.zlib.static}/lib"
     "--extra-lib-dirs=${pkgs.ncurses5.override { enableStatic = true; }}/lib"
  ];

but it did not make a difference (and there was already a --extra-lib-dirs=/nix/store/1xwbnc903gymfi99zpvj8mdp5601yqz6-ncurses-6.1/lib commde line argument passed automatically somehow).

Is it maybe dubious that https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/2c07921cff84dfb0b9e0f6c2d10ee2bfee6a85ac/pkgs/development/libraries/ncurses/default.nix starts with

, enableStatic ? stdenv.hostPlatform.useAndroidPrebuilt

[nomeata]

A work-around is to compile the haskeline package with -f-readline; I am not sure which features are lost this way.

[nh2]

Check out commit 76d2cd3. All that was needed was

static-haskell-nix/survey/default.nix

Lines 629 to 634 in 76d2cd3

	tttool = self.callCabal2nix "tttool" (pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
	owner = "entropia";
	repo = "tip-toi-reveng";
	rev = "f83977f1bc117f8738055b978e3cfe566b433483";
	sha256 = "05bbn63sn18s6c7gpcmzbv4hyfhn1i9bd2bw76bv6abr58lnrwk3";
	}) {};

I could then build it with

NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/88ae8f7d.tar.gz nix-build --no-link survey/default.nix -A haskellPackages.tttool

Since I have commited this, you can now build it the same way, and I have also uploaded it to the cachix.

(If you add tttool to Stackage, you will get that for free without an entry as I have committed now.)

For clarity, it is also possible to do this without adding code to static-haskell-nix, by importing it instead; example:

static-haskell-nix/static-stack/default.nix

Lines 38 to 42 in 76d2cd3

	# In `survey` we provide a nixpkgs set with some fixes; import it here.
	pkgs = (import ../survey/default.nix {
	inherit normalPkgs;
	overlays = [ pyopenssl-fix-test-buffer-size-overlay ];
	}).pkgs;

[nh2]

I've also uploaded the static result: https://github.com/nh2/static-haskell-nix/releases/tag/tttool-static

7.7 MB uncompressed.

[nh2]

In other words, because you use pkgs.pkgsMusl instead of my overridden haskellPackages, you likely don't have any of my fixes to build stuff statically, including the one for tinfo.

[nomeata]

Thanks for the fix and explanation!

I also managed to build it statically using haskell.nix, and since that also gives me windows builds, I will probably use that for now. But using plain nixpks eventually (with your work) would be nice!

[srid]

@nomeata Can plain nixpkgs not give Windows builds? Must one switch to haskell.nix for that?

[nomeata]

Haven't tried recently, back then they had a fair amount of patches for cross compilation onto Windows that were not in upstream nixpkgs yet.

[nh2]

I believe that all tinfo / ncurses issues should be fixed with PR #98.