I think that it's not very helpful to get "cached failures" in a wrong
`flake.nix`. This can be very confusing when debugging a Nix expression.
See for instance NixOS/nixpkgs#118115.
In fact, the eval cache allows a forced reevaluation which is used for
e.g. `nix eval`.
This change makes sure that this is the case for `nix build` as well. So
rather than
λ ma27 [~/Projects/exp] → ../nix/outputs/out/bin/nix build -L --rebuild --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes'
error: cached failure of attribute 'defaultPackage.x86_64-linux'
the evaluation of already-evaluated (and failed) attributes looks like
this now:
λ ma27 [~/Projects/exp] → ../nix/outputs/out/bin/nix build -L --rebuild --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes'
error: attribute 'hell' missing
at /nix/store/mrnvi9ss8zn5wj6gpn4bcd68vbh42mfh-source/flake.nix:6:35:
5|
6| packages.x86_64-linux.hello = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.hell;
| ^
7|
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
This avoids an ambiguity where the `StorePathWithOutputs { drvPath, {}
}` could mean "build `brvPath`" or "substitute `drvPath`" depending on
context.
It also brings the internals closer in line to the new CLI, by
generalizing the `Buildable` type is used there and makes that
distinction already.
In doing so, relegate `StorePathWithOutputs` to being a type just for
backwards compatibility (CLI and RPC).
Where a `RealisedPath` is a store path with its history, meaning either
an opaque path for stuff that has been directly added to the store, or a
`Realisation` for stuff that has been built by a derivation
This is a low-level refactoring that doesn't bring anything by itself
(except a few dozen extra lines of code :/ ), but raising the
abstraction level a bit is important on a number of levels:
- Commands like `nix build` have to query for the realisations after the
build is finished which is fragile (see
27905f12e4a7207450abe37c9ed78e31603b67e1 for example). Having them
oprate directly at the realisation level would avoid that
- Others like `nix copy` currently operate directly on (built) store
paths, but need a bit more information as they will need to register
the realisations on the remote side
