forked from lix-project/lix
Maximilian Bosch
bfdd908f7d
In #4770 I implemented proper `nix-shell(1)` support for derivations using `__structuredAttrs = true;`. Back then we decided to introduce two new environment variables, `NIX_ATTRS_SH_FILE` for `.attrs.sh` and `NIX_ATTRS_JSON_FILE` for `.attrs.json`. This was to avoid having to copy these files to `$NIX_BUILD_TOP` in a `nix-shell(1)` session which effectively meant copying these files to the project dir without cleaning up afterwords[1]. On last NixCon I resumed hacking on `__structuredAttrs = true;` by default for `nixpkgs` with a few other folks and getting back to it, I identified a few problems with the how it's used in `nixpkgs`: * A lot of builders in `nixpkgs` don't care about the env vars and assume that `.attrs.sh` and `.attrs.json` are in `$NIX_BUILD_TOP`. The sole reason why this works is that `nix-shell(1)` sources the contents of `.attrs.sh` and then sources `$stdenv/setup` if it exists. This may not be pretty, but it mostly works. One notable difference when using nixpkgs' stdenv as of now is however that `$__structuredAttrs` is set to `1` on regular builds, but set to an empty string in a shell session. Also, `.attrs.json` cannot be used in shell sessions because it can only be accessed by `$NIX_ATTRS_JSON_FILE` and not by `$NIX_BUILD_TOP/.attrs.json`. I considered changing Nix to be compatible with what nixpkgs effectively does, but then we'd have to either move $NIX_BUILD_TOP for shell sessions to a temporary location (and thus breaking a lot of assumptions) or we'd reintroduce all the problems we solved back then by using these two env vars. This is partly because I didn't document these variables back then (mea culpa), so I decided to drop all mentions of `.attrs.{json,sh}` in the manual and only refer to `$NIX_ATTRS_SH_FILE` and `$NIX_ATTRS_JSON_FILE`. The same applies to all our integration tests. Theoretically we could deprecated using `"$NIX_BUILD_TOP"/.attrs.sh` in the future now. * `nix develop` and `nix print-dev-env` don't support this environment variable at all even though they're supposed to be part of the replacement for `nix-shell` - for the drv debugging part to be precise. This isn't a big deal for the vast majority of derivations, i.e. derivations relying on nixpkgs' `stdenv` wiring things together properly. This is because `nix develop` effectively "clones" the derivation and replaces the builder with a script that dumps all of the environment, shell variables, functions etc, so the state of structured attrs being "sourced" is transmitted into the dev shell and most of the time you don't need to worry about `.attrs.sh` not existing because the shell is correctly configured and the if [ -e .attrs.sh ]; then source .attrs.sh; fi is simply omitted. However, this will break when having a derivation that reads e.g. from `.attrs.json` like with import <nixpkgs> {}; runCommand "foo" { __structuredAttrs = true; foo.bar = 23; } '' cat $NIX_ATTRS_JSON_FILE # doesn't work because it points to /build/.attrs.json '' To work around this I employed a similar approach as it exists for `nix-shell`: the `NIX_ATTRS_{JSON,SH}_FILE` vars are replaced with temporary locations. The contents of `.attrs.sh` and `.attrs.json` are now written into the JSON by `get-env.sh`, the builder that `nix develop` injects into the derivation it's debugging. So finally the exact file contents are present and exported by `nix develop`. I also made `.attrs.json` a JSON string in the JSON printed by `get-env.sh` on purpose because then it's not necessary to serialize the object structure again. `nix develop` only needs the JSON as string because it's only written into the temporary file. I'm not entirely sure if it makes sense to also use a temporary location for `nix print-dev-env` (rather than just skipping the rewrite in there), but this would probably break certain cases where it's relied upon `$NIX_ATTRS_SH_FILE` to exist (prime example are the `nix print-dev-env` test-cases I wrote in this patch using `tests/shell.nix`, these would fail because the env var exists, but it cannot read from it). [1] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/4770#issuecomment-836799719 |
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| boehmgc-coroutine-sp-fallback.diff | ||
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| configure.ac | ||
| CONTRIBUTING.md | ||
| COPYING | ||
| default.nix | ||
| docker.nix | ||
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| flake.nix | ||
| local.mk | ||
| Makefile | ||
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| README.md | ||
| shell.nix | ||
Nix
Nix is a powerful package manager for Linux and other Unix systems that makes package management reliable and reproducible. Please refer to the Nix manual for more details.
Installation
On Linux and macOS the easiest way to install Nix is to run the following shell command (as a user other than root):
$ curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh
Information on additional installation methods is available on the Nix download page.
Building And Developing
See our Hacking guide in our manual for instruction on how to to set up a development environment and build Nix from source.
Contributing
Check the contributing guide if you want to get involved with developing Nix.
Additional Resources
License
Nix is released under the LGPL v2.1.