move closure property to discussion references

This commit is contained in:
Valentin Gagarin 2022-05-26 05:15:53 +02:00
parent 445f753a82
commit 4341849193
2 changed files with 17 additions and 21 deletions

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@ -35,21 +35,6 @@ A bare file or symlink can be a root file system object.
Symlinks pointing outside of their own root, or to a store object without a matching reference, are allowed, but might not function as intended.
## Reference {#reference}
A store object can reference other store objects.
Nix stores have the *closure property*: for each store object in the store, all the store objects it references must also be in the store.
Building, copying and deleting store objects must be done in a way that obeys this property:
- Build results must only refer to store objects in the closure of the build inputs.
- Store objects being copied must refer to objects already in the destination store.
Recursive copying must either proceed in dependency order or be atomic.
- We can only safely delete unreferenced objects.
### Reference scanning
While references could be arbitrary paths, Nix requires them to be store paths to ensure correctness.

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@ -52,12 +52,23 @@ References are [opaque][opaque-data-type], [unique identifiers][unique-identifie
The only way to obtain references is by adding or building store objects.
A reference will always point to exactly one store object.
An added store object cannot have references, unless it is a build task.
Nix stores have the *closure property*: for each store object in the store, all the store objects it references must also be in the store.
Adding, building, copying and deleting store objects must be done in a way that obeys this property:
- A newly added store object cannot have references, unless it is a build task.
- Build results must only refer to store objects in the closure of the build inputs.
Building a store object will add appropriate references, according to provided build instructions.
These references can only come from declared build inputs, and are not known to build instructions a priori.
These references can only come from declared build inputs.
- Store objects being copied must refer to objects already in the destination store.
Recursive copying must either proceed in dependency order or be atomic.
- We can only safely delete store objects which are not reachable from any reference still in use.
A store object cannot be deleted as long as it is reachable from a reference still in use.
Garbage collection will delete all store objects that cannot be reached from any reference in use.
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