Build for toolchains for CloudABI / WASI

[Ericson2314]

https://cloudabi.org/ is a cap-safe "censored POSIX". (https://lwn.net/Articles/674770/ is a good secondary source.) It would be nice if Nixpkgs could cross compiler to this platform. While mainstream software has been ported to run on this platform (https://github.com/NuxiNL/cloudabi-ports), since it is a not standard Unixish, packages shouldn't be expected to work out of the box. Therefore Nixpkgs ought to support it as it does embedded platforms: building toolchains should work (though they aren't cached), but nothing else is supported.

I'm mainly interested in this so we can cross compile [a ported] Nix to that platform (NixOS/nix#2759) so various experiments can take place.

[edolstra]

Discussing whether to add support for another platform (especially a non-POSIX platform) is best done via an RFC. A quick look at the number of patches at https://github.com/NuxiNL/cloudabi-ports/tree/master/packages suggests that the overhead in supporting this platform would be considerable.

[Ericson2314]

best done via an RFC

I'm hoping we end up, per NixOS/rfcs#31 (comment), doing just 1 RFC to establish the criteria for supporting any platform.

suggests that the overhead in supporting this platform would be considerable.

Yes it will be, which is why I suggest treat it like an embedded platform and make no effort to build packages on that platform, just tools for that platform.

Hopefully that RFC, in pivoting to define the criteria for supporting platforms, defines the "embedded platform level of support" precisely.

[stale]

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[Ericson2314]

Yeah, it would be still nice to do this.

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info