A modern, delicious implementation of the Nix package manager, focused on correctness, usability, and growth — and committed to doing right by its community
https://lix.systems
![]() This allows Nix builders to call Nix to build derivations, with some limitations. Example: let nixpkgs = fetchTarball channel:nixos-18.03; in with import <nixpkgs> {}; runCommand "foo" { buildInputs = [ nix jq ]; NIX_PATH = "nixpkgs=${nixpkgs}"; } '' hello=$(nix-build -E '(import <nixpkgs> {}).hello.overrideDerivation (args: { name = "hello-3.5"; })') $hello/bin/hello mkdir -p $out/bin ln -s $hello/bin/hello $out/bin/hello nix path-info -r --json $hello | jq . '' This derivation makes a recursive Nix call to build GNU Hello and symlinks it from its $out, i.e. # ll ./result/bin/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 63 Jan 1 1970 hello -> /nix/store/s0awxrs71gickhaqdwxl506hzccb30y5-hello-3.5/bin/hello # nix-store -qR ./result /nix/store/hwwqshlmazzjzj7yhrkyjydxamvvkfd3-glibc-2.26-131 /nix/store/s0awxrs71gickhaqdwxl506hzccb30y5-hello-3.5 /nix/store/sgmvvyw8vhfqdqb619bxkcpfn9lvd8ss-foo This is implemented as follows: * Before running the outer builder, Nix creates a Unix domain socket '.nix-socket' in the builder's temporary directory and sets $NIX_REMOTE to point to it. It starts a thread to process connections to this socket. (Thus you don't need to have nix-daemon running.) * The daemon thread uses a wrapper store (RestrictedStore) to keep track of paths added through recursive Nix calls, to implement some restrictions (see below), and to do some censorship (e.g. for purity, queryPathInfo() won't return impure information such as signatures and timestamps). * After the build finishes, the output paths are scanned for references to the paths added through recursive Nix calls (in addition to the inputs closure). Thus, in the example above, $out has a reference to $hello. The main restriction on recursive Nix calls is that they cannot do arbitrary substitutions. For example, doing nix-store -r /nix/store/kmwd1hq55akdb9sc7l3finr175dajlby-hello-2.10 is forbidden unless /nix/store/kmwd... is in the inputs closure or previously built by a recursive Nix call. This is to prevent irreproducible derivations that have hidden dependencies on substituters or the current store contents. Building a derivation is fine, however, and Nix will use substitutes if available. In other words, the builder has to present proof that it knows how to build a desired store path from scratch by constructing a derivation graph for that path. Probably we should also disallow instantiating/building fixed-output derivations (specifically, those that access the network, but currently we have no way to mark fixed-output derivations that don't access the network). Otherwise sandboxed derivations can bypass sandbox restrictions and access the network. When sandboxing is enabled, we make paths appear in the sandbox of the builder by entering the mount namespace of the builder and bind-mounting each path. This is tricky because we do a pivot_root() in the builder to change the root directory of its mount namespace, and thus the host /nix/store is not visible in the mount namespace of the builder. To get around this, just before doing pivot_root(), we branch a second mount namespace that shares its /nix/store mountpoint with the parent. Recursive Nix currently doesn't work on macOS in sandboxed mode (because we can't change the sandbox policy of a running build) and in non-root mode (because setns() barfs). |
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.github | ||
config | ||
contrib | ||
corepkgs | ||
doc/manual | ||
m4 | ||
maintainers | ||
misc | ||
mk | ||
perl | ||
scripts | ||
src | ||
tests | ||
.dir-locals.el | ||
.editorconfig | ||
.gitignore | ||
.travis.yml | ||
.version | ||
bootstrap.sh | ||
configure.ac | ||
COPYING | ||
local.mk | ||
Makefile | ||
Makefile.config.in | ||
nix.spec.in | ||
README.md | ||
release-common.nix | ||
release.nix | ||
shell.nix |
Nix, the purely functional package manager
Nix is a new take on package management that is fairly unique. Because of its purity aspects, a lot of issues found in traditional package managers don't appear with Nix.
To find out more about the tool, usage and installation instructions, please read the manual, which is available on the Nix website at http://nixos.org/nix/manual.
Contributing
Take a look at the Hacking Section of the manual. It helps you to get started with building Nix from source.
License
Nix is released under the LGPL v2.1
This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit.