Future editions of flakes or the Nix language can be supported by
renaming flake.nix (e.g. flake-v2.nix). This avoids a bootstrap
problem where we don't know which grammar to use to parse
flake*.nix. It also allows a project to support multiple flake
editions, in theory.
This is useful for finding out what a registry lookup resolves to, e.g
$ nix flake info patchelf
Resolved URL: github:NixOS/patchelf
Locked URL: github:NixOS/patchelf/cd7955af31698c571c30b7a0f78e59fd624d0229
One application for this is pinning the 'nixpkgs' flake to the exact
revision used to build the NixOS system, e.g.
{
"flakes": [
{
"from": {
"id": "nixpkgs",
"type": "indirect"
},
"to": {
"owner": "NixOS",
"repo": "nixpkgs",
"type": "github",
"rev": "b0c285807d6a9f1b7562ec417c24fa1a30ecc31a"
}
}
],
"version": 2
}
This copies a flake and all its inputs recursively to a store (e.g. a
binary cache). This is intended to enable long-term reproducibility
for flakes. However this will also require #3253.
Example:
$ nix flake archive --json --to file:///tmp/my-cache nixops
{"path":"/nix/store/272igzkgl1gdzmabsjvb2kb2zqbphb3p-source","inputs":{"nixops-aws":{"path":"/nix/store/ybcykw13gr7iq1pzg18iyibbcv8k9q1v-source","inputs":{}},"nixops-hetzner":{"path":"/nix/store/6yn0205x3nz55w8ms3335p2841javz2d-source","inputs":{}},"nixpkgs":{"path":"/nix/store/li3lkr2ajrzphqqz3jj2avndnyd3i5lc-source","inputs":{}}}}
$ ll /tmp/my-cache
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 eelco users 403 Jan 30 01:01 272igzkgl1gdzmabsjvb2kb2zqbphb3p.narinfo
-rw-r--r-- 1 eelco users 403 Jan 30 01:01 6yn0205x3nz55w8ms3335p2841javz2d.narinfo
-rw-r--r-- 1 eelco users 408 Jan 30 01:01 li3lkr2ajrzphqqz3jj2avndnyd3i5lc.narinfo
drwxr-xr-x 2 eelco users 6 Jan 30 01:01 nar
-rw-r--r-- 1 eelco users 21 Jan 30 01:01 nix-cache-info
-rw-r--r-- 1 eelco users 404 Jan 30 01:01 ybcykw13gr7iq1pzg18iyibbcv8k9q1v.narinfo
Fixes#3336.
Added a flag --no-update-lock-file to barf if the lock file needs any
changes. This is useful for CI systems if you're building a
checkout. Fixes#2947.
Renamed --no-save-lock-file to --no-write-lock-file. It is now a fatal
error if the lock file needs changes but --no-write-lock-file is not
given.
E.g.
$ nix flake update ~/Misc/eelco-configurations/hagbard \
--override-input 'dwarffs/nixpkgs' ../my-nixpkgs
overrides the 'nixpkgs' input of the 'dwarffs' input of the top-level
flake.
Fixes#2837.
A command like
$ nix run nixpkgs#hello
will now build the attribute 'packages.${system}.hello' rather than
'packages.hello'. Note that this does mean that the flake needs to
export an attribute for every system type it supports, and you can't
build on unsupported systems. So 'packages' typically looks like this:
packages = nixpkgs.lib.genAttrs ["x86_64-linux" "i686-linux"] (system: {
hello = ...;
});
The 'checks', 'defaultPackage', 'devShell', 'apps' and 'defaultApp'
outputs similarly are now attrsets that map system types to
derivations/apps. 'nix flake check' checks that the derivations for
all platforms evaluate correctly, but only builds the derivations in
'checks.${system}'.
Fixes#2861. (That issue also talks about access to ~/.config/nixpkgs
and --arg, but I think it's reasonable to say that flakes shouldn't
support those.)
The alternative to attribute selection is to pass the system type as
an argument to the flake's 'outputs' function, e.g. 'outputs = { self,
nixpkgs, system }: ...'. However, that approach would be at odds with
hermetic evaluation and make it impossible to enumerate the packages
provided by a flake.
If 'input.<name>.uri' changes, then the entry in the lockfile for
input <name> should be considered stale.
Also print some messages when lock file entries are added/updated.
As long as the flake input is locked, it is now only fetched when it
is evaluated (e.g. "nixpkgs" is fetched when
"inputs.nixpkgs.<something>" is evaluated).
This required adding an "id" attribute to the members of "inputs" in
lockfiles, e.g.
"inputs": {
"nixpkgs/release-19.03": {
"id": "nixpkgs",
"inputs": {},
"narHash": "sha256-eYtxncIMFVmOHaHBtTdPGcs/AnJqKqA6tHCm0UmPYQU=",
"nonFlakeInputs": {},
"uri": "github:edolstra/nixpkgs/e9d5882bb861dc48f8d46960e7c820efdbe8f9c1"
}
}
because the flake ID needs to be known beforehand to construct the
"inputs" attrset.
Fixes#2913.
This is primarily useful for version string generation, where we need
a monotonically increasing number. The revcount is the preferred thing
to use, but isn't available for GitHub flakes (since it requires
fetching the entire history). The last commit timestamp OTOH can be
extracted from GitHub tarballs.
Example:
$ nix flake info dwarffs
ID: dwarffs
URI: github:edolstra/dwarffs/a83d182fe3fe528ed6366a5cec3458bcb1a5f6e1
Description: A filesystem that fetches DWARF debug info from the Internet on demand
Revision: a83d182fe3fe528ed6366a5cec3458bcb1a5f6e1
Path: /nix/store/grgd14kxxk8q4n503j87mpz48gcqpqw7-source
This ensures that the lock file is updated *before* evaluating it, and
that it gets updated for any nix command, not just 'nix build'.
Also, while computing the lock file, allow arbitrary registry lookups,
not just at top-level.
Also, improve some error messages slightly.
