Nix search path lookups like <nixpkgs> are now desugared to ‘findFile
nixPath <nixpkgs>’, where ‘findFile’ is a new primop. Thus you can
override the search path simply by saying
let
nixPath = [ { prefix = "nixpkgs"; path = "/my-nixpkgs"; } ];
in ... <nixpkgs> ...
In conjunction with ‘scopedImport’ (commit
c273c15cb1), the Nix search path can be
propagated across imports, e.g.
let
overrides = {
nixPath = [ ... ] ++ builtins.nixPath;
import = fn: scopedImport overrides fn;
scopedImport = attrs: fn: scopedImport (overrides // attrs) fn;
builtins = builtins // overrides;
};
in scopedImport overrides ./nixos
‘scopedImport’ works like ‘import’, except that it takes a set of
attributes to be added to the lexical scope of the expression,
essentially extending or overriding the builtin variables. For
instance, the expression
scopedImport { x = 1; } ./foo.nix
where foo.nix contains ‘x’, will evaluate to 1.
This has a few applications:
* It allows getting rid of function argument specifications in package
expressions. For instance, a package expression like:
{ stdenv, fetchurl, libfoo }:
stdenv.mkDerivation { ... buildInputs = [ libfoo ]; }
can now we written as just
stdenv.mkDerivation { ... buildInputs = [ libfoo ]; }
and imported in all-packages.nix as:
bar = scopedImport pkgs ./bar.nix;
So whereas we once had dependencies listed in three places
(buildInputs, the function, and the call site), they now only need
to appear in one place.
* It allows overriding builtin functions. For instance, to trace all
calls to ‘map’:
let
overrides = {
map = f: xs: builtins.trace "map called!" (map f xs);
# Ensure that our override gets propagated by calls to
# import/scopedImport.
import = fn: scopedImport overrides fn;
scopedImport = attrs: fn: scopedImport (overrides // attrs) fn;
# Also update ‘builtins’.
builtins = builtins // overrides;
};
in scopedImport overrides ./bla.nix
* Similarly, it allows extending the set of builtin functions. For
instance, during Nixpkgs/NixOS evaluation, the Nixpkgs library
functions could be added to the default scope.
There is a downside: calls to scopedImport are not memoized, unlike
import. So importing a file multiple times leads to multiple parsings
/ evaluations. It would be possible to construct the AST only once,
but that would require careful handling of variables/environments.
Now, in addition to a."${b}".c, you can write a.${b}.c (applicable
wherever dynamic attributes are valid).
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
NAR info files in binary caches can now have a cryptographic signature
that Nix will verify before using the corresponding NAR file.
To create a private/public key pair for signing and verifying a binary
cache, do:
$ openssl genrsa -out ./cache-key.sec 2048
$ openssl rsa -in ./cache-key.sec -pubout > ./cache-key.pub
You should also come up with a symbolic name for the key, such as
"cache.example.org-1". This will be used by clients to look up the
public key. (It's a good idea to number keys, in case you ever need
to revoke/replace one.)
To create a binary cache signed with the private key:
$ nix-push --dest /path/to/binary-cache --key ./cache-key.sec --key-name cache.example.org-1
The public key (cache-key.pub) should be distributed to the clients.
They should have a nix.conf should contain something like:
signed-binary-caches = *
binary-cache-public-key-cache.example.org-1 = /path/to/cache-key.pub
If all works well, then if Nix fetches something from the signed
binary cache, you will see a message like:
*** Downloading ‘http://cache.example.org/nar/7dppcj5sc1nda7l54rjc0g5l1hamj09j-subversion-1.7.11’ (signed by ‘cache.example.org-1’) to ‘/nix/store/7dppcj5sc1nda7l54rjc0g5l1hamj09j-subversion-1.7.11’...
On the other hand, if the signature is wrong, you get a message like
NAR info file `http://cache.example.org/7dppcj5sc1nda7l54rjc0g5l1hamj09j.narinfo' has an invalid signature; ignoring
Signatures are implemented as a single line appended to the NAR info
file, which looks like this:
Signature: 1;cache.example.org-1;HQ9Xzyanq9iV...muQ==
Thus the signature has 3 fields: a version (currently "1"), the ID of
key, and the base64-encoded signature of the SHA-256 hash of the
contents of the NAR info file up to but not including the Signature
line.
Issue #75.
Since addAttr has to iterate through the AttrPath we pass it, it makes
more sense to just iterate through the AttrNames in addAttr instead. As
an added bonus, this allows attrsets where two dynamic attribute paths
have the same static leading part (see added test case for an example
that failed previously).
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
This adds new syntax for attribute names:
* attrs."${name}" => getAttr name attrs
* attrs ? "${name}" => isAttrs attrs && hasAttr attrs name
* attrs."${name}" or def => if attrs ? "${name}" then attrs."${name}" else def
* { "${name}" = value; } => listToAttrs [{ inherit name value; }]
Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that. The attribute chains
can be arbitrarily long and contain combinations of static and dynamic
parts (e.g. attrs."${foo}".bar."${baz}" or qux), which is relatively
straightforward for the getAttrs/hasAttrs cases but is more complex for
the listToAttrs case due to rules about duplicate attribute definitions.
For attribute sets with dynamic attribute names, duplicate static
attributes are detected at parse time while duplicate dynamic attributes
are detected when the attribute set is forced. So, for example, { a =
null; a.b = null; "${"c"}" = true; } will be a parse-time error, while
{ a = {}; "${"a"}".b = null; c = true; } will be an eval-time error
(technically that case could theoretically be detected at parse time,
but the general case would require full evaluation). Moreover, duplicate
dynamic attributes are not allowed even in cases where they would be
with static attributes ({ a.b.d = true; a.b.c = false; } is legal, but {
a."${"b"}".d = true; a."${"b"}".c = false; } is not). This restriction
might be relaxed in the future in cases where the static variant would
not be an error, but it is not obvious that that is desirable.
Finally, recursive attribute sets with dynamic attributes have the
static attributes in scope but not the dynamic ones. So rec { a = true;
"${"b"}" = a; } is equivalent to { a = true; b = true; } but rec {
"${"a"}" = true; b = a; } would be an error or use a from the
surrounding scope if it exists.
Note that the getAttr, getAttr or default, and hasAttr are all
implemented purely in the parser as syntactic sugar, while attribute
sets with dynamic attribute names required changes to the AST to be
implemented cleanly.
This is an alternative solution to and closes#167
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
Certain desugaring schemes may require the parser to use some builtin
function to do some of the work (e.g. currently `throw` is used to
lazily cause an error if a `<>`-style path is not in the search path)
Unfortunately, these names are not reserved keywords, so an expression
that uses such a syntactic sugar will not see the expected behavior
(see tests/lang/eval-okay-redefine-builtin.nix for an example).
This adds the ExprBuiltin AST type, which when evaluated uses the value
from the rootmost variable scope (which of course is initialized
internally and can't shadow any of the builtins).
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
This is requires if you have attribute names with dots in them. So
you can now say:
$ nix-instantiate '<nixos>' -A 'config.systemd.units."postgresql.service".text' --eval-only
Fixes#151.
