The original idea was to implement a git-fetcher in Nix's core that
supports content hashes[1]. In #3549[2] it has been suggested to
actually use `fetchTree` for this since it's a fairly generic wrapper
over the new fetcher-API[3] and already supports content-hashes.
This patch implements a new git-fetcher based on `fetchTree` by
incorporating the following changes:
* Removed the original `fetchGit`-implementation and replaced it with an
alias on the `fetchTree` implementation.
* Ensured that the `git`-fetcher from `libfetchers` always computes a
content-hash and returns an "empty" revision on dirty trees (the
latter one is needed to retain backwards-compatibility).
* The hash-mismatch error in the fetcher-API exits with code 102 as it
usually happens whenever a hash-mismatch is detected by Nix.
* Removed the `flakes`-feature-flag: I didn't see a reason why this API
is so tightly coupled to the flakes-API and at least `fetchGit` should
remain usable without any feature-flags.
* It's only possible to specify a `narHash` for a `git`-tree if either a
`ref` or a `rev` is given[4].
* It's now possible to specify an URL without a protocol. If it's missing,
`file://` is automatically added as it was the case in the original
`fetchGit`-implementation.
[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/3216
[2] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/3549#issuecomment-625194383
[3] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/3459
[4] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/3216#issuecomment-553956703
If you do a fetchTree on a Git repository, whether the result contains
a revCount attribute should not depend on whether that repository
happens to be a shallow clone or not. That would complicate caching a
lot and would be semantically messy. So applying fetchTree/fetchGit to
a shallow repository is now an error unless you pass the attribute
'shallow = true'. If 'shallow = true', we don't return revCount, even
if the repository is not actually shallow.
Note that Nix itself is not doing shallow clones at the moment. But it
could do so as an optimisation if the user specifies 'shallow = true'.
Issue #2988.
Worktrees[1] are a feature of git which allow you to check out a ref in
a different directory.
While playing around with flakes I realized that git repositories in a
worktree checkout break when trying to build a flake:
```
$ git worktree add ../nixpkgs-flakes nixpkgs-flakes
$ cd ../nixpkgs-flakes
$ nix build .#hello
error: opening directory '/home/ma27/Projects/nixpkgs-flakes/.git/refs/heads': Not a directory
```
This issue has been fixed by determining with `git rev-parse --git-common-dir`
where the actual `.git` directory is.
Please note that this issue only exists on the `flakes` branch, fetching
worktree checkouts with Nix master seems to work fine.
[1] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree
This replaces the '(...)' installable syntax, which is not very
discoverable. The downside is that you can't have multiple expressions
or mix expressions and other installables.
The current usage technically works by putting multiple different
repos in to the same git directory. However, it is very slow as
Git tries very hard to find common commits between the two
repositories. If the two repositories are large (like Nixpkgs and
another long-running project,) it is maddeningly slow.
This change busts the cache for existing deployments, but users
will be promptly repaid in per-repository performance.
In this mode, the following restrictions apply:
* The builtins currentTime, currentSystem and storePath throw an
error.
* $NIX_PATH and -I are ignored.
* fetchGit and fetchMercurial require a revision hash.
* fetchurl and fetchTarball require a sha256 attribute.
* No file system access is allowed outside of the paths returned by
fetch{Git,Mercurial,url,Tarball}. Thus 'nix build -f ./foo.nix' is
not allowed.
Thus, the evaluation result is completely reproducible from the
command line arguments. E.g.
nix build --pure-eval '(
let
nix = fetchGit { url = https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git; rev = "9c927de4b179a6dd210dd88d34bda8af4b575680"; };
nixpkgs = fetchGit { url = https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git; ref = "release-17.09"; rev = "66b4de79e3841530e6d9c6baf98702aa1f7124e4"; };
in (import (nix + "/release.nix") { inherit nix nixpkgs; }).build.x86_64-linux
)'
The goal is to enable completely reproducible and traceable
evaluation. For example, a NixOS configuration could be fully
described by a single Git commit hash. 'nixos-rebuild' would do
something like
nix build --pure-eval '(
(import (fetchGit { url = file:///my-nixos-config; rev = "..."; })).system
')
where the Git repository /my-nixos-config would use further fetchGit
calls or Git externals to fetch Nixpkgs and whatever other
dependencies it has. Either way, the commit hash would uniquely
identify the NixOS configuration and allow it to reproduced.
Maximilian Bosch
