I'm afraid I missed a few problematic `git(1)`-calls while implementing
PR #6440, sorry for that! Upon investigating what went wrong, I realized
that I only tested against the "cached"-case by accident because my
git-checkout with my system's flake was apparently cached during my
debugging.
I managed to trigger the original issue again by running:
$ git commit --allow-empty -m "tmp"
$ sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .# -L --builders ''
Since `repoDir` points to the checkout that's potentially owned by
another user, I decided to add `--git-dir` to each call affecting
`repoDir`.
Since the `tmpDir` for the temporary submodule-checkout is created by
Nix itself, it doesn't seem to be an issue.
Sorry for that, it should be fine now.
The previous head caching implementation stored two paths in the local
cache; one for the cached git repo and another textfile containing the
resolved HEAD ref. This commit instead stores the resolved HEAD by
setting the HEAD ref in the local cache appropriately.
after #6218 `Symbol` no longer confers a uniqueness invariant on the
string it wraps, it is now possible to create multiple symbols that
compare equal but whose string contents have different addresses. this
guarantee is now only provided by `SymbolIdx`, leaving `Symbol` only as
a string wrapper that knows about the intricacies of how symbols need to
be formatted for output.
this change renames `SymbolIdx` to `Symbol` to restore the previous
semantics of `Symbol` to that name. we also keep the wrapper type and
rename it to `SymbolStr` instead of returning plain strings from lookups
into the symbol table because symbols are formatted for output in many
places. theoretically we do not need `SymbolStr`, only a function that
formats a string for output as a symbol, but having to wrap every symbol
that appears in a message into eg `formatSymbol()` is error-prone and
inconvient.
The `--git-dir=` must be `.` in some cases (for cached repos that are
"bare" repos in `~/.cache/nix/gitv3`). With this fix we can add
`--git-dir` to each `git`-invokation needed for `nixos-rebuild`.
To demonstrate the problem:
* You need a `git` at 2.33.3 in your $PATH
* An expression like this in a git repository:
``` nix
{
outputs = { self, nixpkgs }: {
packages.foo.x86_64-linux = with nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux;
runCommand "snens" { } ''
echo ${(builtins.fetchGit ./.).lastModifiedDate} > $out
'';
};
}
```
Now, when instantiating the package via `builtins.getFlake`, it fails on
Nix 2.7 like this:
$ nix-instantiate -E '(builtins.getFlake "'"$(pwd)"'").packages.foo.x86_64-linux'
fatal: unsafe repository ('/nix/store/a7j3125km4h8l0p71q6ssfkxamfh5d61-source' is owned by someone else)
To add an exception for this directory, call:
git config --global --add safe.directory /nix/store/a7j3125km4h8l0p71q6ssfkxamfh5d61-source
error: program 'git' failed with exit code 128
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
This breaks e.g. `nixops`-deployments using flakes with similar
expressions as shown above.
The cause for this is that `git(1)` tries to find the highest
`.git`-directory in the directory tree and if it finds a such a
directory, but with another owning user (root vs. the user who evaluates
the expression), it fails as above. This was changed recently to fix
CVE-2022-24765[1].
By explicitly specifying `--git-dir`, Git assumes to be in the top-level
directory and doesn't attempt to look for a `.git`-directory in the
parent directories and thus the code-path leading to said error is never
reached.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqv8veb5i6.fsf@gitster.g/
The produced path is then allowed be imported or utilized elsewhere:
```
assert (43 == import (builtins.toFile "source" "43")); "good"
```
This will still fail on write-only stores.
with position and symbol tables in place we can now shrink Attr by a full
pointer with some simple field reordering. since Attr is a very hot struct this
has substantial impact on memory use, decreasing GC allocations and heap size by
10-15% each. we also get a ~15% performance improvement due to reduced GC
loading.
pure parsing has taken a hit over the branch base because positions are now
slightly more expensive to create, but overall we get a noticeable improvement.
before (on memory-friendliness):
Benchmark 1: nix search --no-eval-cache --offline ../nixpkgs hello
Time (mean ± σ): 6.960 s ± 0.028 s [User: 5.832 s, System: 0.897 s]
Range (min … max): 6.886 s … 7.005 s 20 runs
Benchmark 2: nix eval -f ../nixpkgs/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/hackage-packages.nix
Time (mean ± σ): 328.1 ms ± 1.7 ms [User: 295.8 ms, System: 32.2 ms]
Range (min … max): 324.9 ms … 331.2 ms 20 runs
Benchmark 3: nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
Time (mean ± σ): 2.688 s ± 0.029 s [User: 2.365 s, System: 0.238 s]
Range (min … max): 2.642 s … 2.742 s 20 runs
after:
Benchmark 1: nix search --no-eval-cache --offline ../nixpkgs hello
Time (mean ± σ): 6.902 s ± 0.039 s [User: 5.844 s, System: 0.783 s]
Range (min … max): 6.820 s … 6.956 s 20 runs
Benchmark 2: nix eval -f ../nixpkgs/pkgs/development/haskell-modules/hackage-packages.nix
Time (mean ± σ): 330.7 ms ± 2.2 ms [User: 300.6 ms, System: 30.0 ms]
Range (min … max): 327.5 ms … 334.5 ms 20 runs
Benchmark 3: nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
Time (mean ± σ): 2.330 s ± 0.027 s [User: 2.040 s, System: 0.234 s]
Range (min … max): 2.272 s … 2.383 s 20 runs
this slightly increases the amount of memory used for any given symbol, but this
increase is more than made up for if the symbol is referenced more than once in
the EvalState that holds it. on average every symbol should be referenced at
least twice (once to introduce a binding, once to use it), so we expect no
increase in memory on average.
symbol tables are limited to 2³² entries like position tables, and similar
arguments apply to why overflow is not likely: 2³² symbols would require as many
string instances (at 24 bytes each) and map entries (at 24 bytes or more each,
assuming that the map holds on average at most one item per bucket as the docs
say). a full symbol table would require at least 192GB of memory just for
symbols, which is well out of reach. (an ofborg eval of nixpks today creates
less than a million symbols!)
PosTable deduplicates origin information, so using symbols for paths is no
longer necessary. moving away from path Symbols also reduces the usage of
symbols for things that are not keys in attribute sets, which will become
important in the future when we turn symbols into indices as well.
Pos objects are somewhat wasteful as they duplicate the origin file name and
input type for each object. on files that produce more than one Pos when parsed
this a sizeable waste of memory (one pointer per Pos). the same goes for
ptr<Pos> on 64 bit machines: parsing enough source to require 8 bytes to locate
a position would need at least 8GB of input and 64GB of expression memory. it's
not likely that we'll hit that any time soon, so we can use a uint32_t index to
locate positions instead.
when we introduce position and symbol tables we'll need to do lookups to turn
indices into those tables into actual positions/symbols. having the error
functions as members of EvalState will avoid a lot of churn for adding lookups
into the tables for each caller.
Maximilian Bosch