![Ana Hobden](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
* add some additional vm tests * Wire things up * Add further tests * Fixups * Add more exhaustive default test check * Whoops fmt * Disable a currently breaking test * Repair notice content in CONTRIBUTING.md
15 KiB
Contributing to nix-installer
We're excited to see what you'd like to contribute to nix-installer
!
Regardless of what (or how much) you contribute to nix-installer
, we value your time
and energy trying to improve the tool.
In order to ensure we all have a good experience, please review this document if you have any questions about the process.
Regular Rust committer? Contributing to nix-installer
should feel similar to
contributing to other serious Rust ecosystem projects. You may already know
the process and expectations of you, this document shouldn't contain any
surprises.
What kinds of contributions are needed?
nix-installer
can benefit from all kinds of contributions:
- Bug reports
- Code improvements
- Registry additions
- Dependency updates or dependency feature trimming
- New features (Please create an issue first!)
- Documentation
- Graphical/visual asset improvement
- Kind words or recommendation on your own site, repo, stream, or social media account
- Onboarding others to using
nix-installer
What are the expectations you can have of the maintainers?
You can expect us to:
- Follow the Contributor Covenant, just like you
- Help diagnose bug reports (for supported platforms using supported languages)
- Give constructive feedback on pull requests
- Merge pull requests which:
- Have been approved of by at least 1 maintainer
- Pass all tests
- Have no complex conflicts with in-flight high priority work
The maintainers of this project use a separate issue tracker for some internal tasks. Unfortunately, the contents of this tracker is not publicly visible as it may contain sensitive or confidential data. Our maintainers will endeavor to ensure you are not 'left out' of the discussion about your contributions.
What kind of expectations do the maintainers have from you?
We expect you to:
- Follow the Contributor Covenant, just like them
- Make an earnest attempt to follow the contribution process described in this document
- Update bug reports with a solution, if you find one before we do
- Do your best to follow existing conventions
- Reflect maintainer feedback if you are able
- Declare if you need to abandon a PR so someone else can shepherd it
How exactly does the contribution process work?
Here are how to do various kinds of contributions.
Bug Reports
Create an issue on the issue page.
It should contain:
- Your OS (Linux, Mac) and architecture (x86_64, aarch64)
- Your
nix-installer
version (nix-installer --version
) - The thing you tried to run (eg
nix-installer
) - What happened (the output of the command, please)
- What you expected to happen
- If you tried to fix it, what did you try?
Code/Documentation improvement
For minor fixes, documentation, or changes which do not have a tangible impact on user experience, feel free to open a pull request directly.
If the code improvement is not minor, such as new features or user facing changes, an issue proposing the change is required for non-maintainers.
Please:
- Write civil commit messages, it's ok if they are simple like
fmt
orformatting
- Follow existing conventions and style within the code the best you can
- Describe in your PR the problem and solution so reviewers don't need to rebuild much context
- Run
nix flake check
andnix build
Non-code contributions
Please open an issue to chat about your contribution and figure out how to best integrate it into the project.
Development
Some snippets or workflows for development.
Direnv support
While nix develop
should work perfectly fine for development, contributors may prefer to enable direnv
or nix-direnv
support.
From the project folder:
direnv allow
If using an editor, it may be preferable to adopt an addon to enter the environment:
Testing Installs
If you're hacking on nix-installer
, you likely already have Nix and cannot test locally.
That's probably a good thing! You should test in a sandbox.
Automated [qemu
tests][#qemu-vm-tests] exist and should be preferred for oneshot testing of changes.
For interactive testing, tools like libvirt
via virt-manager
or vagrant
can be used to spin up machines and run experiments.
When running such interactive tests, consider creating a snapshot of the VM right before running the installer, so you can quickly roll back if something happens.
In general, it's a good idea to test on the closest you can get to the desired target environment. For example, when testing the Steam Deck planner it's a good idea to run that test in a Steam Deck VM as described in detail in the planner.
Adding a planner for specific hardware?
Please include an full guide on how to create the best known virtual testing environment for that device.
A link is not sufficient, it may break. Please provide a full summary of steps to take, link to any original source and give them credit if it is appropriate.
It's perfectly fine if they are manual or labor intensive, as these should be a one time thing and get snapshotted prior to running tests.
qemu
VM tests
For x86_64 Linux we have some additional QEMU based tests. In nix/tests/vm-test
there exists some Nix derivations which we expose in the flake via hydraJobs
.
These should be visible in nix flake show
:
❯ nix flake show
warning: Git tree '/home/ana/git/determinatesystems/nix-installer' is dirty
git+file:///home/ana/git/determinatesystems/nix-installer
# ...
├───hydraJobs
│ └───vm-test
│ ├───all
│ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ └───install-default: derivation 'all'
│ ├───fedora-v36
│ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ └───install-default: derivation 'installer-test-fedora-v36-install-default'
│ ├───rhel-v7
│ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ └───install-default: derivation 'installer-test-rhel-v7-install-default'
│ ├───rhel-v8
│ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ └───install-default: derivation 'installer-test-rhel-v8-install-default'
│ ├───rhel-v9
│ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ └───install-default: derivation 'installer-test-rhel-v9-install-default'
│ └───ubuntu-v22_04
│ └───x86_64-linux
│ └───install-default: derivation 'installer-test-ubuntu-v22_04-install-default'
To run all of the currently supported tests:
nix build .#hydraJobs.vm-test.all.x86_64-linux.all -L
To run a specific distribution listed in the nix flake show
output:
nix build .#hydraJobs.vm-test.rhel-v7.x86_64-linux.all -L -j 4
You may wish to set
-j 4
to some other number. Some OS's (Ubuntu 16.04) exhibit problems rapidly updating their users/groups on a system running dozens of VMs.
For PR review, you can also test arbitrary branches or checkouts like so:
nix build github:determinatesystems/nix-installer/${BRANCH}#hydraJobs.vm-test.ubuntu-v22_04.x86_64-linux.install-default -L
Adding a distro?
Notice how rhel-v7
has a v7
, not just 7
? That's so the test output shows correctly, as Nix will interpret the first -\d
(eg -7
, -123213
) as a version, and not show it in the output.
Using v7
instead turns:
# ...
installer-test-rhel> Unpacking Vagrant box /nix/store/8maga4w267f77agb93inbg54whh5lxhn-libvirt.box...
installer-test-rhel> Vagrantfile
installer-test-rhel> box.img
installer-test-rhel> info.json
installer-test-rhel> metadata.json
installer-test-rhel> Formatting './disk.qcow2', fmt=qcow2 cluster_size=65536 extended_l2=off compression_type=zlib size=137438953472 backing_file=./box.img backing_fmt=qcow2 lazy_refcounts=off refcount_bits=16
# ...
Into this:
# ...
installer-test-rhel-v7-install-default> Unpacking Vagrant box /nix/store/8maga4w267f77agb93inbg54whh5lxhn-libvirt.box...
installer-test-rhel-v7-install-default> Vagrantfile
installer-test-rhel-v7-install-default> box.img
installer-test-rhel-v7-install-default> info.json
installer-test-rhel-v7-install-default> metadata.json
installer-test-rhel-v7-install-default> Formatting './disk.qcow2', fmt=qcow2 cluster_size=65536 extended_l2=off compression_type=zlib size=137438953472 backing_file=./box.img backing_fmt=qcow2 lazy_refcounts=off refcount_bits=16
# ...
Container tests
For x86_64 Linux we have some additional container tests. In nix/tests/container-test
there exists some Nix derivations which we expose in the flake via hydraJobs
.
These should be visible in nix flake show
:
❯ nix flake show
warning: Git tree '/home/ana/git/determinatesystems/nix-installer' is dirty
git+file:///home/ana/git/determinatesystems/nix-installer
# ...
├───hydraJobs
│ ├───container-test
│ │ ├───all
│ │ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ │ ├───all: derivation 'all'
│ │ │ ├───docker: derivation 'all'
│ │ │ └───podman: derivation 'all'
│ │ ├───ubuntu-v18_04
│ │ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ │ ├───all: derivation 'all'
│ │ │ ├───docker: derivation 'vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v18_04'
│ │ │ └───podman: derivation 'vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v18_04'
│ │ ├───ubuntu-v20_04
│ │ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ │ ├───all: derivation 'all'
│ │ │ ├───docker: derivation 'vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v20_04'
│ │ │ └───podman: derivation 'vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v20_04'
│ │ └───ubuntu-v22_04
│ │ └───x86_64-linux
│ │ ├───all: derivation 'all'
│ │ ├───docker: derivation 'vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v22_04'
│ │ └───podman: derivation 'vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v22_04'
To run all of the currently supported tests:
You may wish to set
-j 4
to some other number. Some OS's (Ubuntu 16.04) exhibit problems rapidly updating their users/groups on a system running dozens of VMs.
To run a specific distribution listed in the nix flake show
output:
nix build .#hydraJobs.container-test.ubuntu-v22_04.x86_64-linux.docker -L
For PR review, you can also test arbitrary branches or checkouts like so:
nix build github:determinatesystems/nix-installer/${BRANCH}#hydraJobs.container-test.ubuntu-v22_04.x86_64-linux.podman -L
Adding a distro?
Notice how ubuntu-v20_02
has a v20
, not just 20
? That's so the test output shows correctly, as Nix will interpret the first -\d
(eg -20
, -123213
) as a version, and not show it in the output.
Using v20
instead turns:
# ...
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu> machine # [ 23.385182] dhcpcd[670]: vethae56f366: deleting address fe80::c036:c8ff:fe04:5832
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu> machine # this derivation will be built:
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu> machine # /nix/store/9qb0l9n1gsmcyynfmndnq3qpmlvq8rln-foo.drv
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu> machine # [ 23.424605] dhcpcd[670]: vethae56f366: removing interface
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu> machine # building '/nix/store/9qb0l9n1gsmcyynfmndnq3qpmlvq8rln-foo.drv'...
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu> machine # [ 23.371066] systemd[1]: crun-buildah-buildah1810857047.scope: Deactivated successfully.
# ...
Into this:
# ...
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v18_04> machine # [ 23.385182] dhcpcd[670]: vethae56f366: deleting address fe80::c036:c8ff:fe04:5832
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v20_04> machine # this derivation will be built:
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v20_04> machine # /nix/store/9qb0l9n1gsmcyynfmndnq3qpmlvq8rln-foo.drv
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v18_04> machine # [ 23.424605] dhcpcd[670]: vethae56f366: removing interface
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v20_04> machine # building '/nix/store/9qb0l9n1gsmcyynfmndnq3qpmlvq8rln-foo.drv'...
vm-test-run-container-test-ubuntu-v20_04> machine # [ 23.371066] systemd[1]: crun-buildah-buildah1810857047.scope: Deactivated successfully.
# ...
WSL tests
On a Windows Machine with WSL2 enabled (and updated to support systemd) you can test using WSL the scripts in tests/windows
:
.\tests\windows\test-wsl.ps1
.\tests\windows\test-wsl.ps1 -Systemd
If something breaks you may need to unregister the test WSL instance. First, look for the distro prefixed with nix-installer-test
:
$ wsl --list
Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu (Default)
nix-installer-test-ubuntu-jammy
Then delete it:
wsl --unregister nix-installer-test-ubuntu-jammy
You can also remove your $HOME/nix-installer-wsl-tests-temp
folder whenever you wish.
Releases
To cut a release:
- Ensure the
flake.lock
,Cargo.lock
, and Rust dependencies are up-to-date with the following:nix flake update --commit-lock-file
cargo update
(and commit)cargo outdated
- Create a release branch from
main
(git checkout -b release-v0.0.1
) - Remove the
-unreleased
from theversion
field inCargo.toml
,flake.nix
, and the fixture JSON files - Ensure the VM / container tests still pass with the following:
nix flake check -L
nix build .#hydraJobs.container-test.all.x86_64-linux.all -L
nix build .#hydraJobs.vm-test.all.x86_64-linux.all -L
- Push the branch, create a PR ("Release v0.0.1")
- Once the PR tests pass and it has been reviewed, merge it
git pull
on themain
branch- Tag the release (
git tag v0.0.1
) - Push the tag (
git push origin v0.0.1
) - The CI should produce artifacts via Buildkite and create a "Draft" release containing them on GitHub
- This will take a bit, use this time to draft a changelog
- Review the draft release, test the artifacts in a VM
- Create a changelog following the format of last release
- Undraft the release
- Once you are certain the release is good,
cargo publish
it- Warning: While you can re-release Github releases, it is not possible to do the same on
crates.io
- Warning: While you can re-release Github releases, it is not possible to do the same on
- Create a PR bumping the version up one minor in the
Cargo.toml
,flake.nix
, and fixture JSON files, adding-unreleased
at the end (v0.0.2-unreleased
)
Who maintains nix-installer
and why?
nix-installer
is maintained by Determinate Systems in
an effort to explore Nix installer ideas.
Determinate Systems has no plans to monetize or relicense nix-installer
. If your
enterprise requires a support contact in order to adopt a tool, please contact
Determinate Systems and something can be worked out.