Thunks are now overwritten by a helper function
`Value::finishValue(newType, payload)` (where `payload` is the
original anonymous union inside `Value`). This helps to ensure we
never update a value elsewhere, since that would be incompatible with
parallel evaluation (i.e. after a value has transitioned from being a
thunk to being a non-thunk, it should be immutable).
There were two places where this happened: `Value::mkString()` and
`ExprAttrs::eval()`.
This PR also adds a bunch of accessor functions for value contents,
like `Value::integer()` to access the integer field in the union.
Previously, `state.mkList()` would set the type of the value to tList
and allocate the list vector, but it would not initialize the values
in the list. This has two problems:
* If an exception occurs, the list is left in an undefined state.
* More importantly, for multithreaded evaluation, if a value
transitions from thunk to non-thunk, it should be final (i.e. other
threads should be able to access the value safely).
To address this, there now is a `ListBuilder` class (analogous to
`BindingsBuilder`) to build the list vector prior to the call to
`Value::mkList()`. Typical usage:
auto list = state.buildList(size);
for (auto & v : list)
v = ... set value ...;
vRes.mkList(list);
we now keep not a table of all positions, but a table of all origins and
their sizes. position indices are now direct pointers into the virtual
concatenation of all parsed contents. this slightly reduces memory usage
and time spent in the parser, at the cost of not being able to report
positions if the total input size exceeds 4GiB. this limit is not unique
to nix though, rustc and clang also limit their input to 4GiB (although
at least clang refuses to process inputs that are larger, we will not).
this new 4GiB limit probably will not cause any problems for quite a
while, all of nixpkgs together is less than 100MiB in size and already
needs over 700MiB of memory and multiple seconds just to parse. 4GiB
worth of input will easily take multiple minutes and over 30GiB of
memory without even evaluating anything. if problems *do* arise we can
probably recover the old table-based system by adding some tracking to
Pos::Origin (or increasing the size of PosIdx outright), but for time
being this looks like more complexity than it's worth.
since we now need to read the entire input again to determine the
line/column of a position we'll make unsafeGetAttrPos slightly lazy:
mostly the set it returns is only used to determine the file of origin
of an attribute, not its exact location. the thunks do not add
measurable runtime overhead.
notably this change is necessary to allow changing the parser since
apparently nothing supports nix's very idiosyncratic line ending choice
of "anything goes", making it very hard to calculate line/column
positions in the parser (while byte offsets are very easy).
When I started contributing to Nix, I found the mix of definitions and
names in `fmt.hh` to be rather confusing, especially the small
difference between `hintfmt` and `hintformat`. I've renamed many classes
and added documentation to most definitions.
- `formatHelper` is no longer exported.
- `fmt`'s documentation is now with `fmt` rather than (misleadingly)
above `formatHelper`.
- `yellowtxt` is renamed to `Magenta`.
`yellowtxt` wraps its value with `ANSI_WARNING`, but `ANSI_WARNING`
has been equal to `ANSI_MAGENTA` for a long time. Now the name is
updated.
- `normaltxt` is renamed to `Uncolored`.
- `hintfmt` has been merged into `hintformat` as extra constructor
functions.
- `hintformat` has been renamed to `hintfmt`.
- The single-argument `hintformat(std::string)` constructor has been
renamed to a static member `hintformat::interpolate` to avoid pitfalls
with using user-generated strings as format strings.
Pretty-print values in the REPL by printing each item in a list or
attrset on a separate line. When possible, single-item lists and
attrsets are printed on one line, as long as they don't contain a nested
list, attrset, or thunk.
Before:
```
{ attrs = { a = { b = { c = { }; }; }; }; list = [ 1 ]; list' = [ 1 2 3 ]; }
```
After:
```
{
attrs = {
a = {
b = {
c = { };
};
};
};
list = [ 1 ];
list' = [
1
2
3
];
}
```
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`.
This extends the `error: cannot coerce a TYPE to a string` message
to print the value that could not be coerced. This helps with debugging
by making it easier to track down where the value is being produced
from, especially in errors with deep or unhelpful stack traces.
Low-hanging fruit in the spirit of #9753 and #9754 (means 9999years did
all the hard work already).
This basically prints out what was attempted to be called as function,
i.e.
map (import <nixpkgs> {}) [ 1 2 3 ]
now gives the following error message:
error:
… while calling the 'map' builtin
at «string»:1:1:
1| map (import <nixpkgs> {}) [ 1 2 3 ]
| ^
… while evaluating the first argument passed to builtins.map
error: expected a function but found a set: { _type = "pkgs"; AAAAAASomeThingsFailToEvaluate = «thunk»; AMB-plugins = «thunk»; ArchiSteamFarm = «thunk»; BeatSaberModManager = «thunk»; CHOWTapeModel = «thunk»; ChowCentaur = «thunk»; ChowKick = «thunk»; ChowPhaser = «thunk»; CoinMP = «thunk»; «18783 attributes elided»}
Previously, there were two mostly-identical value printers -- one in
`libexpr/eval.cc` (which didn't force values) and one in
`libcmd/repl.cc` (which did force values and also printed ANSI color
codes).
This PR unifies both of these printers into `print.cc` and provides a
`PrintOptions` struct for controlling the output, which allows for
toggling whether values are forced, whether repeated values are tracked,
and whether ANSI color codes are displayed.
Additionally, `PrintOptions` allows tuning the maximum number of
attributes, list items, and bytes in a string that will be displayed;
this makes it ideal for contexts where printing too much output (e.g.
all of Nixpkgs) is distracting. (As requested by @roberth in
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/9554#issuecomment-1845095735)
Please read the tests for example output.
Future work:
- It would be nice to provide this function as a builtin, perhaps
`builtins.toStringDebug` -- a printing function that never fails would
be useful when debugging Nix code.
- It would be nice to support customizing `PrintOptions` members on the
command line, e.g. `--option to-string-max-attrs 1000`.
`eval-system` option overrides just the value of `builtins.currentSystem`.
This is more useful than overriding `system` since you can build these
derivations on remote builders which can work on the given system.
Co-authored-by: John Ericson <John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems>
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
* Print the value in `error: cannot coerce` messages
This extends the `error: cannot coerce a TYPE to a string` message
to print the value that could not be coerced. This helps with debugging
by making it easier to track down where the value is being produced
from, especially in errors with deep or unhelpful stack traces.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Today, with the tests inside a `tests` intermingled with the
corresponding library's source code, we have a few problems:
- We have to be careful that wildcards don't end up with tests being
built as part of Nix proper, or test headers being installed as part
of Nix proper.
- Tests in libraries but not executables is not right:
- It means each executable runs the previous unit tests again, because
it needs the libraries.
- It doesn't work right on Windows, which doesn't want you to load a
DLL just for the side global variable . It could be made to work
with the dlopen equivalent, but that's gross!
This reorg solves these problems.
There is a remaining problem which is that sibbling headers (like
`hash.hh` the test header vs `hash.hh` the main `libnixutil` header) end
up shadowing each other. This PR doesn't solve that. That is left as
future work for a future PR.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
