In particular, doing 'nix build /path/to/dir' now works if
/path/to/dir is not a Git tree (it only has to contain a flake.nix
file).
Also, 'nix flake init' no longer requires a Git tree (but it will do a
'git add flake.nix' if it's a Git tree)
This fetchers copies a plain directory (i.e. not a Git/Mercurial
repository) to the store (or does nothing if the path is already a
store path).
One use case is to pin the 'nixpkgs' flake used to build the current
NixOS system, and prevent it from being garbage-collected, via a
system registry entry like this:
{
"from": {
"id": "nixpkgs",
"type": "indirect"
},
"to": {
"type": "path",
"path": "/nix/store/rralhl3wj4rdwzjn16g7d93mibvlr521-source",
"lastModified": 1585388205,
"rev": "b0c285807d6a9f1b7562ec417c24fa1a30ecc31a"
},
"exact": true
}
Note the fake "lastModified" and "rev" attributes that ensure that the
flake gives the same evaluation results as the corresponding
Git/GitHub inputs.
(cherry picked from commit 12f9379123)