lix/doc/manual/bugs.xml
2004-01-08 15:01:37 +00:00

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<appendix>
<title>Bugs / To-Do</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Unify the concepts of successors and substitutes into a
general notion of <emphasis>equivalent expressions</emphasis>.
Expressions are equivalent if they have the same target paths
with the same identifiers. However, even though they are
functionally equivalent, they may differ stronly with respect
to their <emphasis>performance characteristics</emphasis>.
For example, realising a closure expression is more efficient
that realising the derivation expression from which it was
produced. On the other hand, distributing sources may be more
efficient (storage- or bandwidth-wise) than distributing
binaries. So we need to be able to attach weigths or
priorities or performance annotations to expressions; Nix can
then choose the most efficient expression dependent on the
context.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<emphasis>Build management.</emphasis> In principle it is already
possible to do build management using Nix (by writing builders that
perform appropriate build steps), but the Nix expression language is
not yet powerful enough to make this pleasant (?). The language should
be extended with features from the <ulink
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/maak/'>Maak build manager</ulink>.
Another interesting idea is to write a <command>make</command>
implementation that uses Nix as a back-end to support <ulink
url='http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#legacy'>legacy</ulink>
build files.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</appendix>
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