This is primarily useful for version string generation, where we need
a monotonically increasing number. The revcount is the preferred thing
to use, but isn't available for GitHub flakes (since it requires
fetching the entire history). The last commit timestamp OTOH can be
extracted from GitHub tarballs.
This ensures that flakes don't get garbage-collected, which is
important to get nix-channel-like behaviour.
For example, running
$ nix build hydra:
will create a GC root
~/.cache/nix/flake-closures/hydra -> /nix/store/xarfiqcwa4w8r4qpz1a769xxs8c3phgn-flake-closure
where the contents/references of the linked file in the store are the
flake source trees used by the 'hydra' flake:
/nix/store/n6d5f5lkpfjbmkyby0nlg8y1wbkmbc7i-source
/nix/store/vbkg4zy1qd29fnhflsv9k2j9jnbqd5m2-source
/nix/store/z46xni7d47s5wk694359mq9ay353ar94-source
Note that this in itself is not enough to allow offline use; the
fetcher for the flakeref (e.g. fetchGit or downloadCached) must not
fail if it cannot fetch the latest version of the file, so long as it
knows a cached version.
Issue #2868.
This causes 'nix' to print build log output to stderr rather than
showing the last log line in the progress bar. Log lines are prefixed
by the name of the derivation (minus the version string), e.g.
binutils> make[1]: Leaving directory '/build/binutils-2.31.1'
binutils-wrapper> unpacking sources
binutils-wrapper> patching sources
...
binutils-wrapper> Using dynamic linker: '/nix/store/kr51dlsj9v5cr4n8700jliyz8v5b2q7q-bootstrap-stage0-glibc/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2'
bootstrap-stage2-gcc-wrapper> unpacking sources
...
linux-headers> unpacking sources
linux-headers> unpacking source archive /nix/store/8javli69jhj3bkql2c35gsj5vl91p382-linux-4.19.16.tar.xz
Thus
$ nix dev-shell
will now build the 'provides.devShell' attribute from the flake in the
current directory. If it doesn't exist, it falls back to
'provides.defaultPackage'.
'nix dev-shell' is intended to replace nix-shell. It supports flakes,
e.g.
$ nix dev-shell nixpkgs:hello
starts a bash shell providing an environment for building 'hello'.
Like Lorri (and unlike nix-shell), it computes the build environment
by building a modified top-level derivation that writes the
environment after running $stdenv/setup to $out and exits. This
provides some caching, so it's faster than nix-shell in some cases
(especially for packages with lots of dependencies, where the setup
script takes a long time).
There also is a command 'nix print-dev-env' that prints out shell code
for setting up the build environment in an existing shell, e.g.
$ . <(nix print-dev-env nixpkgs:hello)
https://github.com/tweag/nix/issues/21
Example:
$ nix flake info dwarffs
ID: dwarffs
URI: github:edolstra/dwarffs/a83d182fe3fe528ed6366a5cec3458bcb1a5f6e1
Description: A filesystem that fetches DWARF debug info from the Internet on demand
Revision: a83d182fe3fe528ed6366a5cec3458bcb1a5f6e1
Path: /nix/store/grgd14kxxk8q4n503j87mpz48gcqpqw7-source
This ensures that the lock file is updated *before* evaluating it, and
that it gets updated for any nix command, not just 'nix build'.
Also, while computing the lock file, allow arbitrary registry lookups,
not just at top-level.
Also, improve some error messages slightly.
