desugaring inherit-from to syntactic duplication of the source expr also
duplicates side effects of the source expr (such as trace calls) and
expensive computations (such as derivationStrict).
for plain inherits this is really just a stylistic choice, but for
inherit-from it actually fixes an exponential size increase problem
during expr printing (as may happen during assertion failure reporting,
on during duplicate attr detection in the parser)
this also has the effect of sorting let bindings lexicographically
rather than by symbol creation order as was previously done, giving a
better canonicalization in the process.
When I started contributing to Nix, I found the mix of definitions and
names in `fmt.hh` to be rather confusing, especially the small
difference between `hintfmt` and `hintformat`. I've renamed many classes
and added documentation to most definitions.
- `formatHelper` is no longer exported.
- `fmt`'s documentation is now with `fmt` rather than (misleadingly)
above `formatHelper`.
- `yellowtxt` is renamed to `Magenta`.
`yellowtxt` wraps its value with `ANSI_WARNING`, but `ANSI_WARNING`
has been equal to `ANSI_MAGENTA` for a long time. Now the name is
updated.
- `normaltxt` is renamed to `Uncolored`.
- `hintfmt` has been merged into `hintformat` as extra constructor
functions.
- `hintformat` has been renamed to `hintfmt`.
- The single-argument `hintformat(std::string)` constructor has been
renamed to a static member `hintformat::interpolate` to avoid pitfalls
with using user-generated strings as format strings.
Some tools which consume the "nix print-dev-env" rc script (such as
"nix-direnv") are sensitive to the use of unbound variables. They use
"set -u".
The "nix print-dev-env" rc script initially unsets "shellHook", then
loads variables from the derivation, and then evaluates "shellHook".
However, most derivations don't have a "shellHook" attribute.
So users get the error "shellHook: unbound variable". This can be
demonstrated with the command:
nix print-dev-env nixpkgs#hello | bash -u
This commit changes the rc script to provide an empty fallback value
for the "shellHook" variable.
Closes: #7951#8253
While preparing PRs like #9753, I've had to change error messages in
dozens of code paths. It would be nice if instead of
EvalError("expected 'boolean' but found '%1%'", showType(v))
we could write
TypeError(v, "boolean")
or similar. Then, changing the error message could be a mechanical
refactor with the compiler pointing out places the constructor needs to
be changed, rather than the error-prone process of grepping through the
codebase. Structured errors would also help prevent the "same" error
from having multiple slightly different messages, and could be a first
step towards error codes / an error index.
This PR reworks the exception infrastructure in `libexpr` to
support exception types with different constructor signatures than
`BaseError`. Actually refactoring the exceptions to use structured data
will come in a future PR (this one is big enough already, as it has to
touch every exception in `libexpr`).
The core design is in `eval-error.hh`. Generally, errors like this:
state.error("'%s' is not a string", getAttrPathStr())
.debugThrow<TypeError>()
are transformed like this:
state.error<TypeError>("'%s' is not a string", getAttrPathStr())
.debugThrow()
The type annotation has moved from `ErrorBuilder::debugThrow` to
`EvalState::error`.
As discussed in the maintainer meeting on 2024-01-29.
Mainly this is to avoid a situation where the name is parsed and
treated as a file name, mostly to protect users.
.-* and ..-* are also considered invalid because they might strip
on that separator to remove versions. Doesn't really work, but that's
what we decided, and I won't argue with it, because .-* probably
doesn't seem to have a real world application anyway.
We do still permit a 1-character name that's just "-", which still
poses a similar risk in such a situation. We can't start disallowing
trailing -, because a non-zero number of users will need it and we've
seen how annoying and painful such a change is.
What matters most is preventing a situation where . or .. can be
injected, and to just get this done.
Use `diff --color=always` to print colored output for language test
failures. I've also flipped the arguments so that expected lines missing
from the actual output will be marked with a red `-` and additional
lines found in the actual output will be marked with a green `+`.
Previously it was the other way around, which was very confusing.
This extends the `error: cannot coerce a TYPE to a string` message
to print the value that could not be coerced. This helps with debugging
by making it easier to track down where the value is being produced
from, especially in errors with deep or unhelpful stack traces.
More invariants are enforced in the type, and less state needs to be
stored in the main sink itself. The method here is roughly that known as
"session types".
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
Low-hanging fruit in the spirit of #9753 and #9754 (means 9999years did
all the hard work already).
This basically prints out what was attempted to be called as function,
i.e.
map (import <nixpkgs> {}) [ 1 2 3 ]
now gives the following error message:
error:
… while calling the 'map' builtin
at «string»:1:1:
1| map (import <nixpkgs> {}) [ 1 2 3 ]
| ^
… while evaluating the first argument passed to builtins.map
error: expected a function but found a set: { _type = "pkgs"; AAAAAASomeThingsFailToEvaluate = «thunk»; AMB-plugins = «thunk»; ArchiSteamFarm = «thunk»; BeatSaberModManager = «thunk»; CHOWTapeModel = «thunk»; ChowCentaur = «thunk»; ChowKick = «thunk»; ChowPhaser = «thunk»; CoinMP = «thunk»; «18783 attributes elided»}
Rebecca Turner
Robert Hensing
Maximilian Bosch