This was already accidentally disabled in ba87b08. It also no longer
appears to be beneficial, and in fact slow things down, e.g. when
evaluating a NixOS system configuration:
elapsed time: median = 3.8170 mean = 3.8202 stddev = 0.0195 min = 3.7894 max = 3.8600 [rejected, p=0.00000, Δ=0.36929±0.02513]
“packages” was probably meant to be “packages.${system}.” but that
is already listed in `getDefaultFlakeAttrPathPrefixes` in `installables`,
which is probably why no one noticed it was broken.
In particular, this now works:
$ nix path-info --eval-store auto --store https://cache.nixos.org nixpkgs#hello
Previously this would fail as it would try to upload the hello .drv to
cache.nixos.org. Now the .drv is instantiated in the local store, and
then we check for the existence of the outputs in cache.nixos.org.
Useful when we're using a daemon with a chroot store, e.g.
$ NIX_DAEMON_SOCKET_PATH=/tmp/chroot/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket nix-daemon --store /tmp/chroot
Then the client can now connect with
$ nix build --store unix:///tmp/chroot/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket?root=/tmp/chroot nixpkgs#hello
This avoids an ambiguity where the `StorePathWithOutputs { drvPath, {}
}` could mean "build `brvPath`" or "substitute `drvPath`" depending on
context.
It also brings the internals closer in line to the new CLI, by
generalizing the `Buildable` type is used there and makes that
distinction already.
In doing so, relegate `StorePathWithOutputs` to being a type just for
backwards compatibility (CLI and RPC).
'nix run' will try to run $out/bin/<name>, where <name> is the
derivation name (excluding the version). This often works well:
$ nix run nixpkgs#hello
Hello, world!
$ nix run nix -- --version
nix (Nix) 2.4pre20200626_adf2fbb
$ nix run patchelf -- --version
patchelf 0.11.20200623.e61654b
$ nix run nixpkgs#firefox -- --version
Mozilla Firefox 77.0.1
$ nix run nixpkgs#gimp -- --version
GNU Image Manipulation Program version 2.10.14
though not always:
$ nix run nixpkgs#git
error: unable to execute '/nix/store/kp7wp760l4gryq9s36x481b2x4rfklcy-git-2.25.4/bin/git-minimal': No such file or directory
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).
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).
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.
Some kernels disable "unpriveleged user namespaces". This is
unfortunate, but we can still use mount namespaces. Anyway, since each
builder has its own nixbld user, we already have most of the benefits
of user namespaces.
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.)
