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lisp-modules

This document describes the Nixpkgs infrastructure for building Common Lisp systems that use ASDF (Another System Definition Facility). It lives in pkgs/development/lisp-modules.

Overview

The main entry point of the API are the Common Lisp implementation packages themselves (e.g. abcl, ccl, clasp-common-lisp, clisp, ecl, sbcl). They have the pkgs and withPackages attributes, which can be used to discover available packages and to build wrappers, respectively.

The pkgs attribute set contains packages that were automatically imported from Quicklisp, and any other manually defined ones. Not every package works for all the CL implementations (e.g. nyxt only makes sense for sbcl).

The withPackages function is of primary utility. It is used to build runnable wrappers, with a pinned and pre-built ASDF FASL available in the ASDF environment variable, and CL_SOURCE_REGISTRY/ASDF_OUTPUT_TRANSLATIONS configured to find the desired systems on runtime.

In addition, Lisps have the withOverrides function, which can be used to substitute any package in the scope of their pkgs. This will also be useful together with overrideLispAttrs when dealing with slashy systems, because they should stay in the main package and be built by specifying the systems argument to build-asdf-system.

The 90% use case example

The most common way to use the library is to run ad-hoc wrappers like this:

nix-shell -p 'sbcl.withPackages (ps: with ps; [ alexandria ])'

Then, in a shell:

$ sbcl
* (load (sb-ext:posix-getenv "ASDF"))
* (asdf:load-system 'alexandria)

Also one can create a pkgs.mkShell environment in shell.nix/flake.nix:

let
  sbcl' = sbcl.withPackages (ps: [ ps.alexandria ]);
in mkShell {
  packages = [ sbcl' ];
}

Such a Lisp can be now used e.g. to compile your sources:

{
  buildPhase = ''
    ${sbcl'}/bin/sbcl --load my-build-file.lisp
  '';
}

Importing packages from Quicklisp

To save some work of writing Nix expressions, there is a script that imports all the packages distributed by Quicklisp into imported.nix. This works by parsing its releases.txt and systems.txt files, which are published every couple of months on quicklisp.org.

The import process is implemented in the import directory as Common Lisp code in the org.lispbuilds.nix ASDF system. To run the script, one can execute ql-import.lisp:

cd pkgs/development/lisp-modules
nix-shell --run 'sbcl --script ql-import.lisp'

The script will:

Download the latest Quicklisp systems.txt and releases.txt files
Generate a temporary SQLite database of all QL systems in packages.sqlite
Generate an imported.nix file from the database

(The packages.sqlite file can be deleted at will, because it is regenerated each time the script runs.)

The maintainer's job is to:

Re-run the ql-import.lisp script when there is a new Quicklisp release
Add any missing native dependencies in ql.nix
For packages that still don't build, package them manually in packages.nix

Also, the imported.nix file must not be edited manually! It should only be generated as described in this section (by running ql-import.lisp).

Adding native dependencies

The Quicklisp files contain ASDF dependency data, but don't include native library (CFFI) dependencies, and, in the case of ABCL, Java dependencies.

The ql.nix file contains a long list of overrides, where these dependencies can be added.

Packages defined in packages.nix contain these dependencies naturally.

Trusting `systems.txt` and `releases.txt`

The previous implementation of lisp-modules didn't fully trust the Quicklisp data, because there were times where the dependencies specified were not complete and caused broken builds. It instead used a nix-shell environment to discover real dependencies by using the ASDF APIs.

The current implementation has chosen to trust this data, because it's faster to parse a text file than to build each system to generate its Nix file, and because that way packages can be mass-imported. Because of that, there may come a day where some packages will break, due to bugs in Quicklisp. In that case, the fix could be a manual override in packages.nix and ql.nix.

A known fact is that Quicklisp doesn't include dependencies on slashy systems in its data. This is an example of a situation where such fixes were used, e.g. to replace the systems attribute of the affected packages. (See the definition of iolib).

Quirks

During Quicklisp import:

+ in names is converted to _plus{_,}: cl+ssl->cl_plus_ssl, alexandria+->alexandria_plus
. in names is converted to _dot_: iolib.base->iolib_dot_base
names starting with a number have a _ prepended (3d-vectors->_3d-vectors)
_ in names is converted to __ for reversibility

Defining packages manually inside Nixpkgs

Packages that for some reason are not in Quicklisp, and so cannot be auto-imported, or don't work straight from the import, are defined in the packages.nix file.

In that file, use the build-asdf-system function, which is a wrapper around mkDerivation for building ASDF systems. Various other hacks are present, such as build-with-compile-into-pwd for systems which create files during compilation (such as cl-unicode).

The build-asdf-system function is documented here. Also, packages.nix is full of examples of how to use it.

Defining packages manually outside Nixpkgs

Lisp derivations (abcl, sbcl etc.) also export the buildASDFSystem function, which is similar to build-asdf-system from packages.nix, but is part of the public API.

It takes the following arguments:

pname: the package name
version: the package version
src: the package source
patches: patches to apply to the source before build
nativeLibs: native libraries used by CFFI and grovelling
javaLibs: Java libraries for ABCL
lispLibs: dependencies on other packages build with buildASDFSystem
systems: list of systems to build

It can be used to define packages outside Nixpkgs, and, for example, add them into the package scope with withOverrides.

Including an external package in scope

A package defined outside Nixpkgs using buildASDFSystem can be woven into the Nixpkgs-provided scope like this:

let
  alexandria = sbcl.buildASDFSystem rec {
    pname = "alexandria";
    version = "1.4";
    src = fetchFromGitLab {
      domain = "gitlab.common-lisp.net";
      owner = "alexandria";
      repo = "alexandria";
      rev = "v${version}";
      hash = "sha256-1Hzxt65dZvgOFIljjjlSGgKYkj+YBLwJCACi5DZsKmQ=";
    };
  };
  sbcl' = sbcl.withOverrides (self: super: {
    inherit alexandria;
  });
in sbcl'.pkgs.alexandria

Overriding package attributes

Packages export the overrideLispAttrs function, which can be used to build a new package with different parameters.

Example of overriding alexandria:

sbcl.pkgs.alexandria.overrideLispAttrs (oldAttrs: rec {
  version = "1.4";
  src = fetchFromGitLab {
    domain = "gitlab.common-lisp.net";
    owner = "alexandria";
    repo = "alexandria";
    rev = "v${version}";
    hash = "sha256-1Hzxt65dZvgOFIljjjlSGgKYkj+YBLwJCACi5DZsKmQ=";
  };
})

Dealing with slashy systems

Slashy (secondary) systems should not exist in their own packages! Instead, they should be included in the parent package as an extra entry in the systems argument to the build-asdf-system/buildASDFSystem functions.

The reason is that ASDF searches for a secondary system in the .asd of the parent package. Thus, having them separate would cause either one of them not to load cleanly, because one will contains FASLs of itself but not the other, and vice versa.

To package slashy systems, use overrideLispAttrs, like so:

ecl.pkgs.alexandria.overrideLispAttrs (oldAttrs: {
  systems = oldAttrs.systems ++ [ "alexandria/tests" ];
  lispLibs = oldAttrs.lispLibs ++ [ ecl.pkgs.rt ];
})

See the respective section on using withOverrides for how to weave it back into ecl.pkgs.

Note that sometimes the slashy systems might not only have more dependencies than the main one, but create a circular dependency between .asd files. Unfortunately, in this case an adhoc solution becomes necessary.

Building Wrappers

Wrappers can be built using the withPackages function of Common Lisp implementations (abcl, ecl, sbcl etc.):

nix-shell -p 'sbcl.withPackages (ps: [ ps.alexandria ps.bordeaux-threads ])'

Such a wrapper can then be used like this:

$ sbcl
* (load (sb-ext:posix-getenv "ASDF"))
* (asdf:load-system 'alexandria)
* (asdf:load-system 'bordeaux-threads)

Loading ASDF

For best results, avoid calling (require 'asdf) When using the library-generated wrappers.

Use (load (ext:getenv "ASDF")) instead, supplying your implementation's way of getting an environment variable for ext:getenv. This will load the (pre-compiled to FASL) Nixpkgs-provided version of ASDF.

Loading systems

There, you can use asdf:load-system. This works by setting the right values for the CL_SOURCE_REGISTRY/ASDF_OUTPUT_TRANSLATIONS environment variables, so that systems are found in the Nix store and pre-compiled FASLs are loaded.

Adding a new Lisp

The function wrapLisp is used to wrap Common Lisp implementations. It adds the pkgs, withPackages, withOverrides and buildASDFSystem attributes to the derivation.

wrapLisp takes these arguments:

pkg: the Lisp package
faslExt: Implementation-specific extension for FASL files
program: The name of executable file in ${pkg}/bin/ (Default: pkg.pname)
flags: A list of flags to always pass to program (Default: [])
asdf: The ASDF version to use (Default: pkgs.asdf_3_3)
packageOverrides: Package overrides config (Default: (self: super: {}))

This example wraps CLISP:

wrapLisp {
  pkg = clisp;
  faslExt = "fas";
  flags = ["-E" "UTF8"];
}

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