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`.
since `up` and `values` are both pointer-aligned the type field will
also be pointer-aligned, wasting 48 bits of space on most machines. we
can get away with removing the type field altogether by encoding some
information into the `with` expr that created the env to begin with,
reducing the GC load for the absolutely massive amount of single-entry
envs we create for lambdas. this reduces memory usage of system eval by
quite a bit (reducing heap size of our system eval from 8.4GB to 8.23GB)
and gives similar savings in eval time.
running `nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'`
before:
Time (mean ± σ): 5.576 s ± 0.003 s [User: 5.197 s, System: 0.378 s]
Range (min … max): 5.572 s … 5.581 s 10 runs
after:
Time (mean ± σ): 5.408 s ± 0.002 s [User: 5.019 s, System: 0.388 s]
Range (min … max): 5.405 s … 5.411 s 10 runs
this also reduces forceValue code size and removes the need for
hideInDiagnostics. coopting thunk forcing like this has the additional
benefit of clarifying how these errors can happen in the first place.
forceValue is extremely hot. interestingly adding likeliness annotations
to the branches does not seem to make a difference.
before:
Time (mean ± σ): 4.224 s ± 0.005 s [User: 3.711 s, System: 0.512 s]
Range (min … max): 4.218 s … 4.234 s 10 runs
after:
Time (mean ± σ): 4.140 s ± 0.009 s [User: 3.647 s, System: 0.492 s]
Range (min … max): 4.130 s … 4.152 s 10 runs
almost all uses of this are interactive, except for deepSeq. deepSeq is
going to be expensive and rare enough to not care much about, and
Value::determinePos should usually be cheap enough to not be too much of
a burden in any case.
checking for isBlackhole in the forceValue hot path is rather more
expensive than necessary, and with a little bit of trickery we can move
such handling into the isApp case. small performance benefit, but under
some circumstances we've seen 2% improvement as well.
〉 nix eval --raw --impure --expr 'with import <nixpkgs/nixos> {}; system'
before:
Time (mean ± σ): 4.429 s ± 0.002 s [User: 3.929 s, System: 0.500 s]
Range (min … max): 4.427 s … 4.433 s 10 runs
after:
Time (mean ± σ): 4.396 s ± 0.002 s [User: 3.894 s, System: 0.501 s]
Range (min … max): 4.393 s … 4.399 s 10 runs
This includes position information in more places, making debugging
easier.
Before:
```
$ nix-instantiate --show-trace --eval tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-using-set-as-attr-name.nix
error:
… while evaluating an attribute name
at «none»:0: (source not available)
error: value is a set while a string was expected
```
After:
```
error:
… while evaluating an attribute name
at /pwd/lang/eval-fail-using-set-as-attr-name.nix:5:10:
4| in
5| attr.${key}
| ^
6|
error: value is a set while a string was expected
```
* Finish converting existing comments for internal API docs
99% of this was just reformatting existing comments. Only two exceptions:
- Expanded upon `BuildResult::status` compat note
- Split up file-level `symbol-table.hh` doc comments to get
per-definition docs
Also fixed a few whitespace goofs, turning leading tabs to spaces and
removing trailing spaces.
Picking up from #8133
* Fix two things from comments
* Use triple-backtick not indent for `dumpPath`
* Convert GNU-style `\`..'` quotes to markdown style in API docs
This will render correctly.
Pos objects are somewhat wasteful as they duplicate the origin file name and
input type for each object. on files that produce more than one Pos when parsed
this a sizeable waste of memory (one pointer per Pos). the same goes for
ptr<Pos> on 64 bit machines: parsing enough source to require 8 bytes to locate
a position would need at least 8GB of input and 64GB of expression memory. it's
not likely that we'll hit that any time soon, so we can use a uint32_t index to
locate positions instead.
when we introduce position and symbol tables we'll need to do lookups to turn
indices into those tables into actual positions/symbols. having the error
functions as members of EvalState will avoid a lot of churn for adding lookups
into the tables for each caller.
- Make passing the position to `forceValue` mandatory,
this way we remember people that the position is
important for better error messages
- Add pos to all `forceValue` calls
Changes:
* The divider lines are gone. These were in practice a bit confusing,
in particular with --show-trace or --keep-going, since then there
were multiple lines, suggesting a start/end which wasn't the case.
* Instead, multi-line error messages are now indented to align with
the prefix (e.g. "error: ").
* The 'description' field is gone since we weren't really using it.
* 'hint' is renamed to 'msg' since it really wasn't a hint.
* The error is now printed *before* the location info.
* The 'name' field is no longer printed since most of the time it
wasn't very useful since it was just the name of the exception (like
EvalError). Ideally in the future this would be a unique, easily
googleable error ID (like rustc).
* "trace:" is now just "…". This assumes error contexts start with
something like "while doing X".
Example before:
error: --- AssertionError ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nix
at: (7:7) in file: /home/eelco/Dev/nixpkgs/pkgs/applications/misc/hello/default.nix
6|
7| x = assert false; 1;
| ^
8|
assertion 'false' failed
----------------------------------------------------- show-trace -----------------------------------------------------
trace: while evaluating the attribute 'x' of the derivation 'hello-2.10'
at: (192:11) in file: /home/eelco/Dev/nixpkgs/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix
191| // (lib.optionalAttrs (!(attrs ? name) && attrs ? pname && attrs ? version)) {
192| name = "${attrs.pname}-${attrs.version}";
| ^
193| } // (lib.optionalAttrs (stdenv.hostPlatform != stdenv.buildPlatform && !dontAddHostSuffix && (attrs ? name || (attrs ? pname && attrs ? version)))) {
Example after:
error: assertion 'false' failed
at: (7:7) in file: /home/eelco/Dev/nixpkgs/pkgs/applications/misc/hello/default.nix
6|
7| x = assert false; 1;
| ^
8|
… while evaluating the attribute 'x' of the derivation 'hello-2.10'
at: (192:11) in file: /home/eelco/Dev/nixpkgs/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix
191| // (lib.optionalAttrs (!(attrs ? name) && attrs ? pname && attrs ? version)) {
192| name = "${attrs.pname}-${attrs.version}";
| ^
193| } // (lib.optionalAttrs (stdenv.hostPlatform != stdenv.buildPlatform && !dontAddHostSuffix && (attrs ? name || (attrs ? pname && attrs ? version)))) {
Move clearValue inside Value
mkInt instead of setInt
mkBool instead of setBool
mkString instead of setString
mkPath instead of setPath
mkNull instead of setNull
mkAttrs instead of setAttrs
mkList instead of setList*
mkThunk instead of setThunk
mkApp instead of setApp
mkLambda instead of setLambda
mkBlackhole instead of setBlackhole
mkPrimOp instead of setPrimOp
mkPrimOpApp instead of setPrimOpApp
mkExternal instead of setExternal
mkFloat instead of setFloat
Add note that the static mk* function should be removed eventually
There's no reason to restrict this to Error exceptions. This shouldn't
matter to #1407 since the repl doesn't catch non-Error exceptions
anyway, but you never know...
