The script nix-install-package takes a `Nix package file' (which
contains one or more derivations, along with URLs of Nix caches),
unpacks it, pulls the caches, and installs the derivations in the
user's environment.
For best results, associate the command `xterm -e
/nix/bin/nix-install-package' with the MIME type
`application/x-nix-package' and visit
http://losser.st-lab.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/test/.
* Fixed a segfault caused by the buffering of stderr.
* Fix now allows the specification of the full output path. This
should be used with great care, since it by-passes the normal hash
generation.
* Incremented the version number to 0.4 (prerelease).
NAME'. E.g., on the losser Subversion server, I do `nix-switch --name
svn $(fix ...)' to atomically upgrade the server (the SVN server
uses the Apache and Subversion installations in /nix/var/nix/links/svn).
Renamed `fstateRefs' to `fstateRequisites'. The semantics of this
function is that it returns a list of all paths necessary to realise
a given expression. For a derive expression, this is the union of
requisites of the inputs; for a slice expression, it is the path of
each element in the slice. Also included are the paths of the
expressions themselves. Optionally, one can also include the
requisites of successor expressions (to recycle intermediate
results).
* `nix-switch' now distinguishes between an expression and its normal
form. Usually, only the normal form is registered as a root of the
garbage collector. With the `--source-root' flag, it will also
register the original expression as a root.
* `nix-collect-garbage' now has a flag `--keep-successors' which
causes successors not to be included in the list of garbage paths.
* `nix-collect-garbage' now has a flag `--invert' which will print all
paths that should *not* be garbage collected.
dynamically links against libdb4 (?!), due to LD_LIBRARY_PATH it picks
up our libdb4 instead of SuSE's libdb4, but our libdb4 uses another
glibc so loading barfs.
Instead, all packages should use rpaths to store library locations in
executables/libraries. The disadvantage is that overriding rpaths is
harder. (It is possible by invoking the dynamic linker directly, e.g.,
`/lib/ld-linux.so.2 --ignore-path LIST program args...' to ignore the
rpath for the libraries in LIST). It would be better to use DT_RUNPATH,
which is consulted by the dynamic linker *after* LD_LIBRARY_PATH but
*before* ld.so.cache and the system directories.
substituting for (obvious, really).
* For greater efficiency, nix-pull/unnar will place the output in a
path that is probably the same as what is actually needed, thus
preventing a path copy.
* Even if a output id is given in a Fix package expression, ensure
that the resulting Nix derive expression has a different id. This
is because Nix expressions that are semantically equivalent (i.e.,
build the same result) might be different w.r.t. efficiency or
divergence. It is absolutely vital for the substitute mechanism
that such expressions are not used interchangeably.
number of bytes, e.g., in case of a signal like SIGSTOP.
This caused `nix --dump' to fail sometimes.
Note that this bug went unnoticed because the call to `nix
--dump' is in a pipeline, and the shell ignores non-zero
exit codes from all but the last element in the pipeline.
Is there any way to check the result of the initial elements
in the pipeline? (In other words, is it at all possible to
write reliable shell scripts?)
hash for which no local expansion is available, Nix can execute a
`substitute' which should produce a path with such a hash.
This is policy-free since Nix does not in any way specify how the
substitute should work, i.e., it's an arbitrary (unnormalised)
fstate expression. For example, `nix-pull' registers substitutes
that fetch Nix archives from the network (through `wget') and unpack
them, but any other method is possible as well. This is an
improvement over the old Nix sharing scheme, which had a policy
(fetching through `wget') built in.
The sharing scheme doesn't work completely yet because successors
from fstate rewriting have to be registered on the receiving side.
Probably the whole successor stuff can be folded up into the
substitute mechanism; this would be a nice simplification.
