- This change applies to builtins.toXML and inner workings
- Proof of concept:
```nix
let e = builtins.toXML e; in e
```
- Before:
```
$ nix-instantiate --eval poc.nix
error: infinite recursion encountered
```
- After:
```
$ nix-instantiate --eval poc.nix
error: infinite recursion encountered
at /data/github/kamadorueda/nix/poc.nix:1:9:
1| let e = builtins.toXML e; in e
|
```
This is technically a breaking change, since attempting to set plugin
files after the first non-flag argument will now throw an error. This
is acceptable given the relative lack of stability in a plugin
interface and the need to tie the knot somewhere once plugins can
actually define new subcommands.
Most functions now take a StorePath argument rather than a Path (which
is just an alias for std::string). The StorePath constructor ensures
that the path is syntactically correct (i.e. it looks like
<store-dir>/<base32-hash>-<name>). Similarly, functions like
buildPaths() now take a StorePathWithOutputs, rather than abusing Path
by adding a '!<outputs>' suffix.
Note that the StorePath type is implemented in Rust. This involves
some hackery to allow Rust values to be used directly in C++, via a
helper type whose destructor calls the Rust type's drop()
function. The main issue is the dynamic nature of C++ move semantics:
after we have moved a Rust value, we should not call the drop function
on the original value. So when we move a value, we set the original
value to bitwise zero, and the destructor only calls drop() if the
value is not bitwise zero. This should be sufficient for most types.
Also lots of minor cleanups to the C++ API to make it more modern
(e.g. using std::optional and std::string_view in some places).
EvalState contains a few counters (e.g. nrValues) that increase
quickly enough that they end up being interpreted as pointers by the
garbage collector. Moving it to the heap makes them invisible to the
garbage collector.
This reduces the max RSS doing 100 evaluations of
nixos.tests.firefox.x86_64-linux.drvPath from 455 MiB to 292 MiB.
Note: ideally, allocations would be much further up in the 64-bit
address space to reduce the odds of an integer being misinterpreted as
a pointer. Maybe we can use some linker magic to move the .bss segment
to a higher address.
In this mode, the following restrictions apply:
* The builtins currentTime, currentSystem and storePath throw an
error.
* $NIX_PATH and -I are ignored.
* fetchGit and fetchMercurial require a revision hash.
* fetchurl and fetchTarball require a sha256 attribute.
* No file system access is allowed outside of the paths returned by
fetch{Git,Mercurial,url,Tarball}. Thus 'nix build -f ./foo.nix' is
not allowed.
Thus, the evaluation result is completely reproducible from the
command line arguments. E.g.
nix build --pure-eval '(
let
nix = fetchGit { url = https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git; rev = "9c927de4b179a6dd210dd88d34bda8af4b575680"; };
nixpkgs = fetchGit { url = https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git; ref = "release-17.09"; rev = "66b4de79e3841530e6d9c6baf98702aa1f7124e4"; };
in (import (nix + "/release.nix") { inherit nix nixpkgs; }).build.x86_64-linux
)'
The goal is to enable completely reproducible and traceable
evaluation. For example, a NixOS configuration could be fully
described by a single Git commit hash. 'nixos-rebuild' would do
something like
nix build --pure-eval '(
(import (fetchGit { url = file:///my-nixos-config; rev = "..."; })).system
')
where the Git repository /my-nixos-config would use further fetchGit
calls or Git externals to fetch Nixpkgs and whatever other
dependencies it has. Either way, the commit hash would uniquely
identify the NixOS configuration and allow it to reproduced.
Functions like copyClosure() had 3 bool arguments, which creates a
severe risk of mixing up arguments.
Also, implement copyClosure() using copyPaths().
Also, move a few free-standing functions into StoreAPI and Derivation.
Also, introduce a non-nullable smart pointer, ref<T>, which is just a
wrapper around std::shared_ptr ensuring that the pointer is never
null. (For reference-counted values, this is better than passing a
"T&", because the latter doesn't maintain the refcount. Usually, the
caller will have a shared_ptr keeping the value alive, but that's not
always the case, e.g., when passing a reference to a std::thread via
std::bind.)
Linus Heckemann
Jörg Thalheim