Importing package definitions from Quicklisp#

This page documents how to import packages from Quicklisp.

Nix dumper#

Run:

$ nix-shell
$ sbcl --script ql-import.lisp

This command runs a program that dumps a imported.nix file containing Nix expressions for all packages in Quicklisp. They will be automatically picked up by the lispPackagesFor and lispWithPackages API functions.

It also creates a 'packages.sqlite' file. It's used during the generation of the 'imported.nix' file and can be safely removed. It contains the full information of Quicklisp packages, so you can use it to query the dependency graphs using SQL, if you're interested.

Tarball hashes#

The Nix dumper program will re-use hashes from "imported.nix" if it detects that it's being run for the first time. This saves a lot of bandwidth by not having to download each tarball again.

But when upgrading the Quicklisp release URL, this can take a while because it needs to fetch the source code of each new system to compute its SHA256 hash. This is because Quicklisp only provides a SHA1 , and Nix's builtins.fetchTarball requires a SHA256.

Later on, the hashes are cached in packages.sqlite, and are reused in subsequent invocations. Therefore you might want to keep the 'packages.sqlite' file around if you'd like to keep hashes of historical Quicklisp tarballs, for example for archival purposes.

Choosing a Quicklisp release#

Quicklisp release url's are currently hard-coded and can be changed directly in the source code. See the import directory.

Native and Java libraries#

At the moment, native and Java libraries need to be added manually to imported systems in ql.nix on an as-needed basis.

Dependencies from packages.nix#

Also worth noting is that systems imported from Quicklisp will prefer packages from packages.nix as dependencies, so that custom versions can be provided or broken versions replaced.