Most functions now take a StorePath argument rather than a Path (which
is just an alias for std::string). The StorePath constructor ensures
that the path is syntactically correct (i.e. it looks like
<store-dir>/<base32-hash>-<name>). Similarly, functions like
buildPaths() now take a StorePathWithOutputs, rather than abusing Path
by adding a '!<outputs>' suffix.
Note that the StorePath type is implemented in Rust. This involves
some hackery to allow Rust values to be used directly in C++, via a
helper type whose destructor calls the Rust type's drop()
function. The main issue is the dynamic nature of C++ move semantics:
after we have moved a Rust value, we should not call the drop function
on the original value. So when we move a value, we set the original
value to bitwise zero, and the destructor only calls drop() if the
value is not bitwise zero. This should be sufficient for most types.
Also lots of minor cleanups to the C++ API to make it more modern
(e.g. using std::optional and std::string_view in some places).
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.
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.
So you now get
$ nix build
error: path '.' is not a flake (because it does not reference a Git repository)
rather than
$ nix build
error: unsupported argument '.'
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;
};
};
This exploits the hermetic nature of flake evaluation to speed up
repeated evaluations of a flake output attribute.
For example (doing 'nix build' on an already present package):
$ time nix build nixpkgs:firefox
real 0m1.497s
user 0m1.160s
sys 0m0.139s
$ time nix build nixpkgs:firefox
real 0m0.052s
user 0m0.038s
sys 0m0.007s
The cache is ~/.cache/nix/eval-cache-v1.sqlite, which has entries like
INSERT INTO Attributes VALUES(
X'92a907d4efe933af2a46959b082cdff176aa5bfeb47a98fabd234809a67ab195',
'packages.firefox',
1,
'/nix/store/pbalzf8x19hckr8cwdv62rd6g0lqgc38-firefox-67.0.drv /nix/store/g6q0gx0v6xvdnizp8lrcw7c4gdkzana0-firefox-67.0 out');
where the hash 92a9... is a fingerprint over the flake store path and
the contents of the lockfile. Because flakes are evaluated in pure
mode, this uniquely identifies the evaluation result.
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 like 'nix run', except that the command to execute is defined
in a flake output, e.g.
defaultApp = {
type = "app";
program = "${packages.blender_2_80}/bin/blender";
};
Thus you can do
$ nix app blender-bin
to start Blender from the 'blender-bin' flake.
In the future, we can extend this with sandboxing. (For example we
would want to be able to specify that Blender should not have network
access by default and should only have access to certain paths in the
user's home directory.)
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.
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'.
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.
