When we do something like 'nix flake update --override-input nixpkgs
...', the override is now kept on subsequent calls. (If you don't want
this behaviour, you can use --no-write-lock-file.)
This fetchers copies a plain directory (i.e. not a Git/Mercurial
repository) to the store (or does nothing if the path is already a
store path).
One use case is to pin the 'nixpkgs' flake used to build the current
NixOS system, and prevent it from being garbage-collected, via a
system registry entry like this:
{
"from": {
"id": "nixpkgs",
"type": "indirect"
},
"to": {
"type": "path",
"path": "/nix/store/rralhl3wj4rdwzjn16g7d93mibvlr521-source",
"lastModified": 1585388205,
"rev": "b0c285807d6a9f1b7562ec417c24fa1a30ecc31a"
},
"exact": true
}
Note the fake "lastModified" and "rev" attributes that ensure that the
flake gives the same evaluation results as the corresponding
Git/GitHub inputs.
This allows querying the location of function arguments. E.g.
builtins.unsafeGetAttrPos "x" (builtins.functionArgs ({ x }: null))
=> { column = 57; file = "/home/infinisil/src/nix/inst/test.nix"; line = 1; }
An example use is for pinning the "nixpkgs" entry the system-wide
registry to a particular store path. Inexact matches
(e.g. "nixpkgs/master") should still use the global registry.
One application for this is pinning the 'nixpkgs' flake to the exact
revision used to build the NixOS system, e.g.
{
"flakes": [
{
"from": {
"id": "nixpkgs",
"type": "indirect"
},
"to": {
"owner": "NixOS",
"repo": "nixpkgs",
"type": "github",
"rev": "b0c285807d6a9f1b7562ec417c24fa1a30ecc31a"
}
}
],
"version": 2
}
Using std::filesystem means also having to link with -lstdc++fs on
some platforms and it's hard to discover for what platforms this is
needed. As all the functionality is already implemented as utilities,
use those instead.