This documents the outcome of the change in
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/454:
> We can also automatically add parentheses in the generated
> `buildInputs`, so you can type `nix-shell -p "expr"`
> instead of `"(expr").
The store path is not enough. For example, when we build a dirty tree,
commit, and build the clean tree, a re-evaluation is necessary because
the flake may depend on the lastModified or revCount attributes.
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 allows Nix builders to call Nix to build derivations, with some
limitations.
Example:
let nixpkgs = fetchTarball channel:nixos-18.03; in
with import <nixpkgs> {};
runCommand "foo"
{
buildInputs = [ nix jq ];
NIX_PATH = "nixpkgs=${nixpkgs}";
}
''
hello=$(nix-build -E '(import <nixpkgs> {}).hello.overrideDerivation (args: { name = "hello-3.5"; })')
$hello/bin/hello
mkdir -p $out/bin
ln -s $hello/bin/hello $out/bin/hello
nix path-info -r --json $hello | jq .
''
This derivation makes a recursive Nix call to build GNU Hello and
symlinks it from its $out, i.e.
# ll ./result/bin/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 63 Jan 1 1970 hello -> /nix/store/s0awxrs71gickhaqdwxl506hzccb30y5-hello-3.5/bin/hello
# nix-store -qR ./result
/nix/store/hwwqshlmazzjzj7yhrkyjydxamvvkfd3-glibc-2.26-131
/nix/store/s0awxrs71gickhaqdwxl506hzccb30y5-hello-3.5
/nix/store/sgmvvyw8vhfqdqb619bxkcpfn9lvd8ss-foo
This is implemented as follows:
* Before running the outer builder, Nix creates a Unix domain socket
'.nix-socket' in the builder's temporary directory and sets
$NIX_REMOTE to point to it. It starts a thread to process
connections to this socket. (Thus you don't need to have nix-daemon
running.)
* The daemon thread uses a wrapper store (RestrictedStore) to keep
track of paths added through recursive Nix calls, to implement some
restrictions (see below), and to do some censorship (e.g. for
purity, queryPathInfo() won't return impure information such as
signatures and timestamps).
* After the build finishes, the output paths are scanned for
references to the paths added through recursive Nix calls (in
addition to the inputs closure). Thus, in the example above, $out
has a reference to $hello.
The main restriction on recursive Nix calls is that they cannot do
arbitrary substitutions. For example, doing
nix-store -r /nix/store/kmwd1hq55akdb9sc7l3finr175dajlby-hello-2.10
is forbidden unless /nix/store/kmwd... is in the inputs closure or
previously built by a recursive Nix call. This is to prevent
irreproducible derivations that have hidden dependencies on
substituters or the current store contents. Building a derivation is
fine, however, and Nix will use substitutes if available. In other
words, the builder has to present proof that it knows how to build a
desired store path from scratch by constructing a derivation graph for
that path.
Probably we should also disallow instantiating/building fixed-output
derivations (specifically, those that access the network, but
currently we have no way to mark fixed-output derivations that don't
access the network). Otherwise sandboxed derivations can bypass
sandbox restrictions and access the network.
When sandboxing is enabled, we make paths appear in the sandbox of the
builder by entering the mount namespace of the builder and
bind-mounting each path. This is tricky because we do a pivot_root()
in the builder to change the root directory of its mount namespace,
and thus the host /nix/store is not visible in the mount namespace of
the builder. To get around this, just before doing pivot_root(), we
branch a second mount namespace that shares its /nix/store mountpoint
with the parent.
Recursive Nix currently doesn't work on macOS in sandboxed mode
(because we can't change the sandbox policy of a running build) and in
non-root mode (because setns() barfs).
