As we are working towards Nix 3.0 we want to make sure that we make a
huge step forward in Nix's user experience. And once 3.0 is out of the
door we need to make sure that all future commands and features keep up
the standard of user experience.
This PR adds a CLI guideline document to the Nix documentation. Consider
this document a good starting point and a checklist when somebody will
be (re)implementing commands.
Clearly this guideline does nothing to improve user experience on its
own and can only be useful as long as it is going to be read and
cared for. But it is a first step into that direction.
Since c4c3c15c19 (#4251) building Nix for
macOS with sandboxing fails:
```
getting status of /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs: Operation not permitted
```
This happens, because `EvalSettings::getDefaultNixPath` tries to access
paths outside the sandbox. Since the state-dir is not required for
doc generation, it is set to the dummy folder. This needs to be done
for all nix invocations during doc generation, as
`EvalSettings::getDefaultNixPath` is called unconditionally.
This removes the extra-substituters and extra-sandbox-paths settings
and instead makes every array setting extensible by setting
"extra-<name> = <value>" in the configuration file or passing
"--<name> <value>" on the command line.
pkgs.fetchurl supports an executable argument, which is especially nice
when downloading a large executable. This patch adds the same option to
nix-prefetch-url.
I have tested this to work on the simple case of prefetching a little
executable:
1. nix-prefetch-url --executable https://my/little/script
2. Paste the hash into a pkgs.fetchurl-based package, script-pkg.nix
3. Delete the output from the store to avoid any misidentified artifacts
4. Realise the package script-pkg.nix
5. Run the executable
I repeated the above while using --name, as well.
I suspect --executable would have no meaningful effect if combined with
--unpack, but I have not tried it.
Otherwise, the steps advertised in this document won't actually work
(e.g. `make install` will fail, trying to access /usr, and
`./inst/bin/nix` won't exist).
Some users have their own hashed-mirrors setup, that is used to mirror
things in addition to what’s available on tarballs.nixos.org. Although
this should be feasable to do with a Binary Cache, it’s not always
easy, since you have to remember what "name" each of the tarballs has.
Continuing to support hashed-mirrors is cheap, so it’s best to leave
support in Nix. Note that NIX_HASHED_MIRRORS is also supported in
Nixpkgs through fetchurl.nix.
Note that this excludes tarballs.nixos.org from the default, as in
\#3689. All of these are available on cache.nixos.org.
The new error-format is pretty nice from a UX point-of-view, however
it's fairly hard to parse the output e.g. for editor plugins such as
vim-ale[1] that use `nix-instantiate --parse` to determine syntax errors in
Nix expression files.
This patch extends the `internal-json` logger by adding the fields
`line`, `column` and `file` to easily locate an error in a file and the
field `raw_msg` which contains the error-message itself without
code-lines and additional helpers.
An exemplary output may look like this:
```
[nix-shell]$ ./inst/bin/nix-instantiate ~/test.nix --log-format minimal
{"action":"msg","column":1,"file":"/home/ma27/test.nix","level":0,"line":4,"raw_msg":"syntax error, unexpected IF, expecting $end","msg":"<full error-msg with code-lines etc>"}
```
[1] https://github.com/dense-analysis/ale
Nix installation now requires following redirects using `curl -L`. This
is currently represented on the [Nix download page][] but not in the
manual. This change updates the manual to reflect this.
Using `curl` without the `-L` flag results in an empty body, making
installation a no-op.
[Nix download page]: https://nixos.org/download.html
This should handle installation scenarios we can handle with
anything resembling confidence. Goal is approximating the existing
setup--not enforcing a best-practice...
Approaches (+ installer-handled, - manual) and configs each covers:
+ no change needed; /nix OK on boot volume:
All pre-Catalina (regardless of T2 or FileVault use)
+ create new unencrypted volume:
Catalina, pre-T2, no FileVault
+ create new encrypted-at-rest volume:
Catalina, pre-T2, FileVault
Catalina, T2, no FileVault
- require user to pre-create encrypted volume
Catalina, T2, FileVault
By default Nix/NixOS already set a reasonable default `max-jobs = auto`
so we don't need to mention it in this tutorial.
The option is still documented in other parts of the documentation
if users ever stumble over this.
Fixes https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2531
This PR proposes two changes to the "Upgrading Nix" documentation:
* Besides updating `nixpkgs.nix`, we also update `nixpkgs.cacert`, so that the certificates are up-to-date as well.
* Add the instructions for multi-user mode on Linux.
Motivation: maintain project-level configuration files.
Document the whole situation a bit better so that it corresponds to the
implementation, and add NIX_USER_CONF_FILES that allows overriding
which user files Nix will load during startup.
This line has been this way since it was written, in 9e08f5efe
in 2006.
I think it was just a small mistake then; Eelco's thesis earlier
that year says the permission on each file is set to 0444 or 0555
in a derivation's output as part of the build process. In any
case I'm pretty sure that's the behavior now.
Running `nix-store --gc --delete` will, as of Nix 2.3.3, simply fail
because the --delete option conflicts with the --delete operation.
$ nix-store --gc --delete
error: only one operation may be specified
Try 'nix-store --help' for more information.
Furthermore, it has been broken since at least Nix 0.16 (which was
released sometime in 2010), which means that any scripts which depend
on it should have been broken at least nine years ago. This commit
simply formally removes the option. There should be no actual difference
in behaviour as far as the user is concerned: it errors with the exact
same error message. The manual has been edited to remove any references
to the (now gone) --delete option.
Other information:
* Path for Nix 0.16 used:
/nix/store/rp3sgmskn0p0pj1ia2qwd5al6f6pinz4-nix-0.16
This file is licensed under the GPL. Originally, Nix was also
GPL-licensed so that was fine. However, we later changed the license
to the LGPL but missed the fact that style.css has an incompatible
license.
Since the Nix manual at nixos.org uses its own styling, we can remove
this file.
Fixes#3392.
The flag is `--pure-eval`, which can be found by looking at the test suite; it
should be in the notes describing the feature as well, since otherwise users may
assume this is referencing something like `nix-shell --pure`.
- At the top of the release notes, we announce sandboxing is now enabled by default,
then at the bottom it says it's now disabled when missing kernel support. These
can be merged into one point for clarity.
- The point about `max-jobs` defaulting to 1 appears unrelated to sandboxing.
This documents the outcome of the change in
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/454:
> We can also automatically add parentheses in the generated
> `buildInputs`, so you can type `nix-shell -p "expr"`
> instead of `"(expr").
The `post-build-hook` text currently appears in the index, but not on the actual title line of the section, this follows the pattern used in a previous section to get a reference into a title.
Robert Hensing
Maximilian Bosch
Jade Lovelace
Jörg Thalheim
Jonas Chevalier