For instance, it's pointless to keep copy-from-other-stores running if
there are no other stores, or download-using-manifests if there are no
manifests. This also speeds things up because we don't send queries
to those substituters.
This operation allows fixing corrupted or accidentally deleted store
paths by redownloading them using substituters, if available.
Since the corrupted path cannot be replaced atomically, there is a
very small time window (one system call) during which neither the old
(corrupted) nor the new (repaired) contents are available. So
repairing should be used with some care on critical packages like
Glibc.
Since SubstitutionGoal::finished() in build.cc computes the hash
anyway, we can prevent the inefficiency of computing the hash twice by
letting the substituter tell Nix about the expected hash, which can
then verify it.
scripts.
* Include the version and architecture in the -I flag so that there is
at least a chance that a Nix binary built for one Perl version will
run on another version.
again. (After the previous substituter mechanism refactoring I
didn't update the code that obtains the references of substitutable
paths.) This required some refactoring: the substituter programs
are now kept running and receive/respond to info requests via
stdin/stdout.
it only does something if $NIX_OTHER_STORES (not really a good
name...) is set.
* Do globbing on the elements of $NIX_OTHER_STORES. E.g. you could
set it to /mnts/*/nix or something.
* Install substituters in libexec/nix/substituters.
stores (typically remote Nix stores mounted via e.g. NFS, or the Nix
store on the NixOS installation CD). Example use:
$ sshfs foo@example.org:/ /mnt
$ NIX_OTHER_STORES=/mnt/nix \
NIX_SUBSTITUTERS=.../copy-from-other-stores.pl \
nix-env -i foo
This will be especially useful for the installation CD since it
doesn't require a manifest for the CD contents.
