buildinput inconsistent treating of nested lists

alexarice commented 5 years ago

Issue description

If buildInputs is given a list that contains list e.g. buildInputs = [ [a] b c ] it sometimes successfully passes in the inputs and sometimes doesn't i have seen this occur in cases such as buildInputs = [ a b ] ++ lib.optional buildDocs [ builddocdep ] (although this is probably incorrect I expect it may happen a couple of times in nixpkgs)

Steps to reproduce

clone nixpkgs repository
run nix-build -A grim
It builds

go into the repository and change buildInputs in grim to

buildInputs = [
[cairo]
libjpeg
wayland
wayland-protocols
];

build fails with something like this https://gist.github.com/alexarice/0028eb89577489d5c15ffd07e8e9ddec#file-grim-build-singleton-cairo

change build inputs to this

buildInputs = [
cairo
libjpeg
[wayland]
wayland-protocols
];

build succeeds with something like this https://gist.github.com/alexarice/0028eb89577489d5c15ffd07e8e9ddec#file-build-with-wrapped-wayland

Technical details

system: "x86_64-linux"
host os: Linux 4.19.36, NixOS, 19.09pre177249.dfd8f84aef1 (Loris)
multi-user?: yes
sandbox: yes
version: nix-env (Nix) 2.2.2
channels(alex): ""
channels(root): "nixos-19.09pre177249.dfd8f84aef1"
nixpkgs: /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos

alexarice commented 5 years ago

Feel it is worth adding that grim does not build without the wayland buildInput

stale[bot] commented 4 years ago

Thank you for your contributions.

This has been automatically marked as stale because it has had no activity for 180 days.

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alexarice commented 4 years ago

I believe this is still relevant though I haven't investigated in ages

stale[bot] commented 3 years ago

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

NixOS / nixpkgs