This seems more correct. It also means one can specify the features a
store should support with --store and remote-store=..., which is useful.
I use this to clean up the build remotes test.
Before, processConnection wanted to know a user name and user id, and
`nix-daemon --stdio`, when it isn't proxying to an underlying daemon,
would just assume "root" and 0. But `nix-daemon --stdio` (no proxying)
shouldn't make guesses about who holds the other end of its standard
streams.
Now processConnection takes an "auth hook", so `nix-daemon` can provide
the appropriate policy and daemon.cc doesn't need to know or care what
it is.
If a repo is dirty, it used to return a `rev` object with an "empty"
sha1 (0000000000000000000000000000000000000000). Please note that this
only applies for `builtins.fetchGit` and *not* for `builtins.fetchTree{
type = "git"; }`.
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
Originally, the test was only checking for different “real” storeDir.
That’s an easy case to handle, but the much harder one is if different
virtual store dirs are used. To do this, we need the SubstitutionGoal
to know about the ca, so it can recalculate the path to copy it over.
An important note here is that the store path passed to copyStorePath
needs to be one for srcStore - so that queryPathInfo works properly.
This also adds an error message when the store path from queryPathInfo
is different from the one we requested.
We can’t use custom name here because different names will have
different store paths. This is a limitation of the Store API’s
reliance on store paths.
We might be able to get around the above in the future by using a
dummy name for certain fixed output paths.
This fixes an issue where lockfile generation was not idempotent:
after updating a lockfile, a "follows" node would end up pointing to a
new copy of the node, rather than to the original node.
The `remote-store` test loads the `user-env` one to test nix-env when
using the daemon, but actually does it incorrectly because every test
starts (in `common.sh`) by resetting the value of `NIX_REMOTE`, meaning
that the `user-env` test will never use the daemon.
Fix this by setting `NIX_REMOTE_` before sourcing `user-env.sh` in the
`remote-store` test, so that `NIX_REMOTE` is correctly set inside the
test
The initial contents of the flake is specified by the
'templates.<name>' or 'defaultTemplate' output of another flake. E.g.
outputs = { self }: {
templates = {
nixos-container = {
path = ./nixos-container;
description = "An example of a NixOS container";
};
};
};
allows
$ nix flake init -t templates#nixos-container
Also add a command 'nix flake new', which is identical to 'nix flake
init' except that it initializes a specified directory rather than the
current directory.
The previous regex was too strict and did not match what git was allowing. It
could lead to `fetchGit` not accepting valid branch names, even though they
exist in a repository (for example, branch names containing `/`, which are
pretty standard, like `release/1.0` branches).
The new regex defines what a branch name should **NOT** contain. It takes the
definitions from `refs.c` in https://github.com/git/git and `git help
check-ref-format` pages.
This change also introduces a test for ref name validity checking, which
compares the result from Nix with the result of `git check-ref-format --branch`.
This makes 'nix flake' less cluttered and more consistent (it's only
subcommands that operator on a flake). Also, the registry is not
inherently flake-related (e.g. fetchTree could also use it to remap
inputs).
Motivation: maintain project-level configuration files.
Document the whole situation a bit better so that it corresponds to the
implementation, and add NIX_USER_CONF_FILES that allows overriding
which user files Nix will load during startup.
A test case for correct handling of temporary directory deletion that
was added to check.sh as part of PR #2689 was initially disabled for
Darwin because of a directory permission issue in PR #2688.
Now that the issue in PR #2688 is fixed, this commit enables the test
case for Darwin.
Temporarily add user-write permission to build directory so that it
can be moved out of the sandbox to the store with a .check suffix.
This is necessary because the build directory has already had its
permissions set read-only, but write permission is required
to update the directory's parent link to move it out of the sandbox.
Updated the related --check "derivation may not be deterministic"
messages to consistently use the real store paths.
Added test for non-root sandbox nix-build --check -K to demonstrate
issue and help prevent regressions.
Future editions of flakes or the Nix language can be supported by
renaming flake.nix (e.g. flake-v2.nix). This avoids a bootstrap
problem where we don't know which grammar to use to parse
flake*.nix. It also allows a project to support multiple flake
editions, in theory.
With --check and the --keep-failed (-K) flag, the temporary directory
was being retained regardless of whether the build was successful and
reproducible. This removes the temporary directory, as expected, on
a reproducible check build.
Added tests to verify that temporary build directories are not
retained unnecessarily, particularly when using --check with
--keep-failed.
This provides a pluggable mechanism for defining new fetchers. It adds
a builtin function 'fetchTree' that generalizes existing fetchers like
'fetchGit', 'fetchMercurial' and 'fetchTarball'. 'fetchTree' takes a
set of attributes, e.g.
fetchTree {
type = "git";
url = "https://example.org/repo.git";
ref = "some-branch";
rev = "abcdef...";
}
The existing fetchers are just wrappers around this. Note that the
input attributes to fetchTree are the same as flake input
specifications and flake lock file entries.
All fetchers share a common cache stored in
~/.cache/nix/fetcher-cache-v1.sqlite. This replaces the ad hoc caching
mechanisms in fetchGit and download.cc (e.g. ~/.cache/nix/{tarballs,git-revs*}).
This also adds support for Git worktrees (c169ea5904).
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; }
This is now done in a single pass. Also fixes some issues when
updating flakes with circular dependencies. Finally, when using
'--recreate-lock-file --commit-lock-file', the commit message now
correctly shows the differences.
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 allows all supported fetchers to be used, e.g.
builtins.fetchTree {
type = "github";
owner = "NixOS";
repo = "nix";
rev = "d4df99a3349cf2228a8ee78dea320afef86eb3ba";
}
This improves reproducibility and may be faster than fetching from the
original source (especially for git/hg inputs, but probably also for
github inputs - our binary cache is probably faster than GitHub's
dynamically generated tarballs).
Unfortunately this doesn't work for the top-level flake since even if
we know the NAR hash of the tree, we don't know the other tree
attributes such as revCount and lastModified.
Fixes#3253.
Typical usage:
$ nix flake update ~/Misc/eelco-configurations/hagbard --update-input nixpkgs
to update the 'nixpkgs' input of a flake while leaving every other
input unchanged.
The argument is an input path, so you can do e.g. '--update-input
dwarffs/nixpkgs' to update an input of an input.
Fixes#2928.
Added a flag --no-update-lock-file to barf if the lock file needs any
changes. This is useful for CI systems if you're building a
checkout. Fixes#2947.
Renamed --no-save-lock-file to --no-write-lock-file. It is now a fatal
error if the lock file needs changes but --no-write-lock-file is not
given.
E.g.
$ nix flake update ~/Misc/eelco-configurations/hagbard \
--override-input 'dwarffs/nixpkgs' ../my-nixpkgs
overrides the 'nixpkgs' input of the 'dwarffs' input of the top-level
flake.
Fixes#2837.
When computing a lock file, we now respect the lock files of flake
inputs. This is important for usability / reproducibility. For
example, the 'nixops' flake depends on the 'nixops-aws' and
'nixops-hetzner' repositories. So when the 'nixops' flake is used in
another flake, we want the versions of 'nixops-aws' and
'nixops-hetzner' locked by the the 'nixops' flake because those
presumably have been tested.
This can lead to a proliferation of versions of flakes like 'nixpkgs'
(since every flake's lock file could depend on a different version of
'nixpkgs'). This is not a major issue when using Nixpkgs overlays or
NixOS modules, since then the top-level flake composes those
overlays/modules into *its* version of Nixpkgs and all other versions
are ignored. Lock file computation has been made a bit more lazy so it
won't try to fetch all those versions of 'nixpkgs'.
However, in case it's necessary to minimize flake versions, there now
are two input attributes that allow this. First, you can copy an input
from another flake, as follows:
inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "dwarffs/nixpkgs";
This states that the calling flake's 'nixpkgs' input shall be the same
as the 'nixpkgs' input of the 'dwarffs' input.
Second, you can override inputs of inputs:
inputs.nixpkgs.url = github:edolstra/nixpkgs/<hash>;
inputs.nixops.inputs.nixpkgs.url = github:edolstra/nixpkgs/<hash>;
or equivalently, using 'follows':
inputs.nixpkgs.url = github:edolstra/nixpkgs/<hash>;
inputs.nixops.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
This states that the 'nixpkgs' input of the 'nixops' input shall be
the same as the calling flake's 'nixpkgs' input.
Finally, at '-v' Nix now prints the changes to the lock file, e.g.
$ nix flake update ~/Misc/eelco-configurations/hagbard
inputs of flake 'git+file:///home/eelco/Misc/eelco-configurations?subdir=hagbard' changed:
updated 'nixpkgs': 'github:edolstra/nixpkgs/7845bf5f4b3013df1cf036e9c9c3a55a30331db9' -> 'github:edolstra/nixpkgs/03f3def66a104a221aac8b751eeb7075374848fd'
removed 'nixops'
removed 'nixops/nixops-aws'
removed 'nixops/nixops-hetzner'
removed 'nixops/nixpkgs'
Fixes
error: derivation '/nix/store/klivma7r7h5lndb99f7xxmlh5whyayvg-zlib-1.2.11.drv' has incorrect output '/nix/store/fv98nnx5ykgbq8sqabilkgkbc4169q05-zlib-1.2.11-dev', should be '/nix/store/adm7pilzlj3z5k249s8b4wv3scprhzi1-zlib-1.2.11-dev'
As fromTOML supports \u and \U escapes, bring fromJSON on par. As JSON defaults
to UTF-8 encoding (every JSON parser must support UTF-8), this change parses the
`\u hex hex hex hex` sequence (\u followed by 4 hexadecimal digits) into an
UTF-8 representation.
Add a test to verify correct parsing, using all escape sequences from json.org.
Having a colon in the path may cause issues, and having the hash
function indicated isn't actually necessary. We now verify the path
format in the tests to prevent regressions.
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.
Derivations that want to use recursion should now set
requiredSystemFeatures = [ "recursive-nix" ];
to make the daemon socket appear.
Also, Nix should be configured with "experimental-features =
recursive-nix".
This is an alternative to the IN_NIX_SHELL environment variable,
allowing the expression to adapt itself to nix-shell without
triggering those adaptations when used as a dependency of another
shell.
Closes#3147
Experimental features are now opt-in. There is currently one
experimental feature: "nix-command" (which enables the "nix"
command. This will allow us to merge experimental features more
quickly, without committing to supporting them indefinitely.
Typical usage:
$ nix build --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' nixpkgs#hello
(cherry picked from commit 8e478c2341,
without the "flakes" feature)
Experimental features are now opt-in. There are currently two
experimental features: "nix-command" (which enables the "nix"
command), and "flakes" (which enables support for flakes). This will
allow us to merge experimental features more quickly, without
committing to supporting them indefinitely.
Typical usage:
$ nix build --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' nixpkgs#hello
A command like
$ nix run nixpkgs#hello
will now build the attribute 'packages.${system}.hello' rather than
'packages.hello'. Note that this does mean that the flake needs to
export an attribute for every system type it supports, and you can't
build on unsupported systems. So 'packages' typically looks like this:
packages = nixpkgs.lib.genAttrs ["x86_64-linux" "i686-linux"] (system: {
hello = ...;
});
The 'checks', 'defaultPackage', 'devShell', 'apps' and 'defaultApp'
outputs similarly are now attrsets that map system types to
derivations/apps. 'nix flake check' checks that the derivations for
all platforms evaluate correctly, but only builds the derivations in
'checks.${system}'.
Fixes#2861. (That issue also talks about access to ~/.config/nixpkgs
and --arg, but I think it's reasonable to say that flakes shouldn't
support those.)
The alternative to attribute selection is to pass the system type as
an argument to the flake's 'outputs' function, e.g. 'outputs = { self,
nixpkgs, system }: ...'. However, that approach would be at odds with
hermetic evaluation and make it impossible to enumerate the packages
provided by a flake.
Instead of a list, inputs are now an attrset like
inputs = {
nixpkgs.uri = github:NixOS/nixpkgs;
};
If 'uri' is omitted, than the flake is a lookup in the flake registry, e.g.
inputs = {
nixpkgs = {};
};
but in that case, you can also just omit the input altogether and
specify it as an argument to the 'outputs' function, as in
outputs = { self, nixpkgs }: ...
This also gets rid of 'nonFlakeInputs', which are now just a special
kind of input that have a 'flake = false' attribute, e.g.
inputs = {
someRepo = {
uri = github:example/repo;
flake = false;
};
};
With this patch, and this file I called `log.py`:
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell
#!nix-shell -i python3 -p python3 --pure
import sys
from pprint import pprint
stack = []
timestack = []
for line in open(sys.argv[1]):
components = line.strip().split(" ", 2)
if components[0] != "function-trace":
continue
direction = components[1]
components = components[2].rsplit(" ", 2)
loc = components[0]
_at = components[1]
time = int(components[2])
if direction == "entered":
stack.append(loc)
timestack.append(time)
elif direction == "exited":
dur = time - timestack.pop()
vst = ";".join(stack)
print(f"{vst} {dur}")
stack.pop()
and:
nix-instantiate --trace-function-calls -vvvv ../nixpkgs/pkgs/top-level/release.nix -A unstable > log.matthewbauer 2>&1
./log.py ./log.matthewbauer > log.matthewbauer.folded
flamegraph.pl --title matthewbauer-post-pr log.matthewbauer.folded > log.matthewbauer.folded.svg
I can make flame graphs like: http://gsc.io/log.matthewbauer.folded.svg
---
Includes test cases around function call failures and tryEval. Uses
RAII so the finish is always called at the end of the function.
This currently fails because we're using POSIX file locks. So when the
garbage collector opens and closes its own temproots file, it causes
the lock to be released and then deleted by another GC instance.
Passing `--post-build-hook /foo/bar` to a nix-* command will cause
`/foo/bar` to be executed after each build with the following
environment variables set:
DRV_PATH=/nix/store/drv-that-has-been-built.drv
OUT_PATHS=/nix/store/...build /nix/store/...build-bin /nix/store/...build-dev
This can be useful in particular to upload all the builded artifacts to
the cache (including the ones that don't appear in the runtime closure
of the final derivation or are built because of IFD).
This new feature prints the stderr/stdout output to the `nix-build`
and `nix build` client, and the output is printed in a Nix 2
compatible format:
[nix]$ ./inst/bin/nix-build ./test.nix
these derivations will be built:
/nix/store/ishzj9ni17xq4hgrjvlyjkfvm00b0ch9-my-example-derivation.drv
building '/nix/store/ishzj9ni17xq4hgrjvlyjkfvm00b0ch9-my-example-derivation.drv'...
hello!
bye!
running post-build-hook '/home/grahamc/projects/github.com/NixOS/nix/post-hook.sh'...
post-build-hook: + sleep 1
post-build-hook: + echo 'Signing paths' /nix/store/qr213vjmibrqwnyp5fw678y7whbkqyny-my-example-derivation
post-build-hook: Signing paths /nix/store/qr213vjmibrqwnyp5fw678y7whbkqyny-my-example-derivation
post-build-hook: + sleep 1
post-build-hook: + echo 'Uploading paths' /nix/store/qr213vjmibrqwnyp5fw678y7whbkqyny-my-example-derivation
post-build-hook: Uploading paths /nix/store/qr213vjmibrqwnyp5fw678y7whbkqyny-my-example-derivation
post-build-hook: + sleep 1
post-build-hook: + printf 'very important stuff'
/nix/store/qr213vjmibrqwnyp5fw678y7whbkqyny-my-example-derivation
[nix-shell:~/projects/github.com/NixOS/nix]$ ./inst/bin/nix build -L -f ./test.nix
my-example-derivation> hello!
my-example-derivation> bye!
my-example-derivation (post)> + sleep 1
my-example-derivation (post)> + echo 'Signing paths' /nix/store/c263gzj2kb2609mz8wrbmh53l14wzmfs-my-example-derivation
my-example-derivation (post)> Signing paths /nix/store/c263gzj2kb2609mz8wrbmh53l14wzmfs-my-example-derivation
my-example-derivation (post)> + sleep 1
my-example-derivation (post)> + echo 'Uploading paths' /nix/store/c263gzj2kb2609mz8wrbmh53l14wzmfs-my-example-derivation
my-example-derivation (post)> Uploading paths /nix/store/c263gzj2kb2609mz8wrbmh53l14wzmfs-my-example-derivation
my-example-derivation (post)> + sleep 1
my-example-derivation (post)> + printf 'very important stuff'
[1 built, 0.0 MiB DL]
Co-authored-by: Graham Christensen <graham@grahamc.com>
Co-authored-by: Eelco Dolstra <edolstra@gmail.com>
As long as the flake input is locked, it is now only fetched when it
is evaluated (e.g. "nixpkgs" is fetched when
"inputs.nixpkgs.<something>" is evaluated).
This required adding an "id" attribute to the members of "inputs" in
lockfiles, e.g.
"inputs": {
"nixpkgs/release-19.03": {
"id": "nixpkgs",
"inputs": {},
"narHash": "sha256-eYtxncIMFVmOHaHBtTdPGcs/AnJqKqA6tHCm0UmPYQU=",
"nonFlakeInputs": {},
"uri": "github:edolstra/nixpkgs/e9d5882bb861dc48f8d46960e7c820efdbe8f9c1"
}
}
because the flake ID needs to be known beforehand to construct the
"inputs" attrset.
Fixes#2913.
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 PR was not intended to be merged until those tests were actually
passing. So disable them for now to unbreak the flakes branch.
https://hydra.nixos.org/eval/1519271
I.e. flake3 depends on flake2 which depends on flake1. Currently this
fails with
error: indirect flake reference 'flake1' is not allowed
because we're not propagating lockfiles downwards properly.
For text files it is possible to do it like so:
`builtins.hashString "sha256" (builtins.readFile /tmp/a)`
but that doesn't work for binary files.
With builtins.hashFile any kind of file can be conveniently hashed.
SRI hashes (https://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/) combine the hash algorithm and
a base-64 hash. This allows more concise and standard hash
specifications. For example, instead of
import <nix/fetchurl.nl> {
url = https://nixos.org/releases/nix/nix-2.1.3/nix-2.1.3.tar.xz;
sha256 = "5d22dad058d5c800d65a115f919da22938c50dd6ba98c5e3a183172d149840a4";
};
you can write
import <nix/fetchurl.nl> {
url = https://nixos.org/releases/nix/nix-2.1.3/nix-2.1.3.tar.xz;
hash = "sha256-XSLa0FjVyADWWhFfkZ2iKTjFDda6mMXjoYMXLRSYQKQ=";
};
In fixed-output derivations, the outputHashAlgo is no longer mandatory
if outputHash specifies the hash (either as an SRI or in the old
"<type>:<hash>" format).
'nix hash-{file,path}' now print hashes in SRI format by default. I
also reverted them to use SHA-256 by default because that's what we're
using most of the time in Nixpkgs.
Suggested by @zimbatm.
In structured-attributes derivations, you can now specify per-output
checks such as:
outputChecks."out" = {
# The closure of 'out' must not be larger than 256 MiB.
maxClosureSize = 256 * 1024 * 1024;
# It must not refer to C compiler or to the 'dev' output.
disallowedRequisites = [ stdenv.cc "dev" ];
};
outputChecks."dev" = {
# The 'dev' output must not be larger than 128 KiB.
maxSize = 128 * 1024;
};
Also fixed a bug in allowedRequisites that caused it to ignore
self-references.
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 EvalState::checkSourcePath, the path is checked against the list of
allowed paths first and later it's checked again *after* resolving
symlinks.
The resolving of the symlinks is done via canonPath, which also strips
out "../" and "./". However after the canonicalisation the error message
pointing out that the path is not allowed prints the symlink target in
the error message.
Even if we'd suppress the message, symlink targets could still be leaked
if the symlink target doesn't exist (in this case the error is thrown in
canonPath).
So instead, we now do canonPath() without symlink resolving first before
even checking against the list of allowed paths and then later do the
symlink resolving and checking the allowed paths again.
The first call to canonPath() should get rid of all the "../" and "./",
so in theory the only way to leak a symlink if the attacker is able to
put a symlink in one of the paths allowed by restricted evaluation mode.
For the latter I don't think this is part of the threat model, because
if the attacker can write to that path, the attack vector is even
larger.
Signed-off-by: aszlig <aszlig@nix.build>
Allow global config settings to be defined in multiple Config
classes. For example, this means that libutil can have settings and
evaluator settings can be moved out of libstore. The Config classes
are registered in a new GlobalConfig class to which config files
etc. are applied.
Relevant to https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2009 in that it
removes the need for ad hoc handling of useCaseHack, which was the
underlying cause of that issue.
