ncurses: fix source download

[zeuner]

Description of changes

The package can't be built from source since the source URL throws a HTTP 404 error.

Since there are no other obvious sources, this PR retrieves the source through archive.org.

Things done

• Built on platform(s)
  • x86_64-linux
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • aarch64-darwin
• For non-Linux: Is sandboxing enabled in nix.conf? (See Nix manual)
  • sandbox = relaxed
  • sandbox = true
• Tested, as applicable:
  • NixOS test(s) (look inside nixos/tests)
  • and/or package tests
  • or, for functions and "core" functionality, tests in lib/tests or pkgs/test
  • made sure NixOS tests are linked to the relevant packages
• Tested compilation of all packages that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review rev HEAD". Note: all changes have to be committed, also see nixpkgs-review usage
• Tested basic functionality of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• 24.05 Release Notes (or backporting 23.05 and 23.11 Release notes)
  • (Package updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is major or breaking
  • (Module updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is significant
  • (Module addition) Added a release notes entry if adding a new NixOS module
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

---

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[kirillrdy]

nixos 22.05 EOL is 31 Dec 2022

[zeuner]

nixos 22.05 EOL is 31 Dec 2022

I understand. However, ofborg still uses 22.05: https://github.com/NixOS/ofborg/blob/released/flake.nix#L4 . So what would be the proposed way to handle this if we can't fix 22.05 in nixpkgs?

[mihaimaruseac]

Should this be the GitHub mirror URL instead of web.archive?

[zeuner]

Should this be the GitHub mirror URL instead of web.archive?

archive.org was the only alternative I found without changing the hash. See #277063 for further discussion on this.

[SuperSandro2000]

Suggested change

	# https://github.com/ThomasDickey/ncurses-snapshots/archive/refs/tags/v6_3_20220507.tar.gz
	# has the same source code, but the archive differs. Since we're using
	# fetchurl, we use archive.org here, keeping the hash and avoiding rebuilds
	# old snapshots are removed

yeah, that can happen because those tarballs are generated by git archive.

[SuperSandro2000]

I understand. However, ofborg still uses 22.05: NixOS/ofborg@released/flake.nix#L4 . So what would be the proposed way to handle this if we can't fix 22.05 in nixpkgs?

NixOS/ofborg#670

We can't push to nixos-22.11 and the advancing of channels is likely already deactivated.

right @vcunat ?

[vcunat]

I think 22.11 aren't deactivated yet. Hydra certainly still evaluates both 22.*; I suspect that channel updates will only work for 22.11 at this point. But to me both seem too old to really care.

[vcunat]

However, ofborg still uses 22.05: https://github.com/NixOS/ofborg/blob/released/flake.nix#L4 . So what would be the proposed way to handle this if we can't fix 22.05 in nixpkgs?

I'd primarily suggest working towards upgrading OfBorg to supported NixOS release. EDIT: though I don't know why exactly the old PHP is needed there, etc.

[Ma27]

If php is the only issue, then this sounds like a case for nix-phps.

Also, the tarball for ncurses is cached by cache.nixos.org[1] for exactly the reason that release tarballs tend to be volatile from time to time, so this is neither case of "22.11 is unusable" because we still have a binary cache nor acceptable as it's EOL for almost half a year.

[1] Checked like this:

$ g describe 
22.11-4256-g825ab3126df3
$ nix-build -A ncurses.src               
this path will be fetched (3.44 MiB download, 3.45 MiB unpacked):
  /nix/store/0xiwj5b1vsxpzvqw2y16x86ya4k2f36p-ncurses-6.3-20220507.tgz
copying path '/nix/store/0xiwj5b1vsxpzvqw2y16x86ya4k2f36p-ncurses-6.3-20220507.tgz' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
/nix/store/0xiwj5b1vsxpzvqw2y16x86ya4k2f36p-ncurses-6.3-20220507.tgz
$ nix-hash /nix/store/0xiwj5b1vsxpzvqw2y16x86ya4k2f36p-ncurses-6.3-20220507.tgz --type sha256 --base32 --flat 
02y4n4my5qqhw3fdhdjv1zc9xpyglzlzmzjwq2zcwbwv738255ja

[doronbehar]

I'm closing this as this issue seems no longer relevant.