* Document string context
Now what we have enough primops, we can document how string contexts
work.
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Théophane Hufschmitt <7226587+thufschmitt@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Co-authored-by: Felix Uhl <iFreilicht@users.noreply.github.com>
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);
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`.
End goal: make `(mkDerivation x).drvPath` behave like a non-DrvDeep
context.
Problem: users won't be able to recover the DrvDeep behavior when
nixpkgs makes this change.
Solution: add this primop.
The new primop is fairly simple, and is supposed to complement other
existing ones (`builtins.storePath`, `builtins.outputOf`) so there are
simple ways to construct strings with every type of string context
element.
(It allows nothing we couldn't already do with `builtins.getContext` and `builtins.appendContext`, which is also true of those other two primops.)
This was originally in #8595, but then it was proposed to land some doc
changes separately. So now the code changes proper is just moved to
this, and the doc will be done in that.
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Théophane Hufschmitt <7226587+thufschmitt@users.nore
github.com>
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io
Types converted:
- `NixStringContextElem`
- `OutputsSpec`
- `ExtendedOutputsSpec`
- `DerivationOutput`
- `DerivationType`
Existing ones mostly conforming the pattern cleaned up:
- `ContentAddressMethod`
- `ContentAddressWithReferences`
The `DerivationGoal::derivationType` field had a bogus initialization,
now caught, so I made it `std::optional`. I think #8829 can make it
non-optional again because it will ensure we always have the derivation
when we construct a `DerivationGoal`.
See that issue (#7479) for details on the general goal.
`git grep 'Raw::Raw'` indicates the two types I didn't yet convert
`DerivedPath` and `BuiltPath` (and their `Single` variants) . This is
because @roberth and I (can't find issue right now...) plan on reworking
them somewhat, so I didn't want to churn them more just yet.
Co-authored-by: Eelco Dolstra <edolstra@gmail.com>
We want to be able to write down `foo.drv^bar.drv^baz`:
`foo.drv^bar.drv` is the dynamic derivation (since it is itself a
derivation output, `bar.drv` from `foo.drv`).
To that end, we create `Single{Derivation,BuiltPath}` types, that are
very similar except instead of having multiple outputs (in a set or
map), they have a single one. This is for everything to the left of the
rightmost `^`.
`NixStringContextElem` has an analogous change, and now can reuse
`SingleDerivedPath` at the top level. In fact, if we ever get rid of
`DrvDeep`, `NixStringContextElem` could be replaced with
`SingleDerivedPath` entirely!
Important note: some JSON formats have changed.
We already can *produce* dynamic derivations, but we can't refer to them
directly. Today, we can merely express building or example at the top
imperatively over time by building `foo.drv^bar.drv`, and then with a
second nix invocation doing `<result-from-first>^baz`, but this is not
declarative. The ethos of Nix of being able to write down the full plan
everything you want to do, and then execute than plan with a single
command, and for that we need the new inductive form of these types.
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
This will allow documenting them (in later commits).
Note that we keep the old constructor even if it is no longer used by
Nix code, because it is used in tests/plugins/plugintest.cc, which
suggests that it might be used by some external plugin.
Motivation
`PathSet` is not correct because string contexts have other forms
(`Built` and `DrvDeep`) that are not rendered as plain store paths.
Instead of wrongly using `PathSet`, or "stringly typed" using
`StringSet`, use `std::std<StringContextElem>`.
-----
In support of this change, `NixStringContext` is now defined as
`std::std<StringContextElem>` not `std:vector<StringContextElem>`. The
old definition was just used by a `getContext` method which was only
used by the eval cache. It can be deleted altogether since the types are
now unified and the preexisting `copyContext` function already suffices.
Summarizing the previous paragraph:
Old:
- `value/context.hh`: `NixStringContext = std::vector<StringContextElem>`
- `value.hh`: `NixStringContext Value::getContext(...)`
- `value.hh`: `copyContext(...)`
New:
- `value/context.hh`: `NixStringContext = std::set<StringContextElem>`
- `value.hh`: `copyContext(...)`
----
The string representation of string context elements no longer contains
the store dir. The diff of `src/libexpr/tests/value/context.cc` should
make clear what the new representation is, so we recommend reviewing
that file first. This was done for two reasons:
Less API churn:
`Value::mkString` and friends did not take a `Store` before. But if
`NixStringContextElem::{parse, to_string}` *do* take a store (as they
did before), then we cannot have the `Value` functions use them (in
order to work with the fully-structured `NixStringContext`) without
adding that argument.
That would have been a lot of churn of threading the store, and this
diff is already large enough, so the easier and less invasive thing to
do was simply make the element `parse` and `to_string` functions not
take the `Store` reference, and the easiest way to do that was to simply
drop the store dir.
Space usage:
Dropping the `/nix/store/` (or similar) from the internal representation
will safe space in the heap of the Nix programming being interpreted. If
the heap contains many strings with non-trivial contexts, the saving
could add up to something significant.
----
The eval cache version is bumped.
The eval cache serialization uses `NixStringContextElem::{parse,
to_string}`, and since those functions are changed per the above, that
means the on-disk representation is also changed.
This is simply done by changing the name of the used for the eval cache
from `eval-cache-v4` to eval-cache-v5`.
----
To avoid some duplication `EvalCache::mkPathString` is added to abstract
over the simple case of turning a store path to a string with just that
string in the context.
Context
This PR picks up where #7543 left off. That one introduced the fully
structured `NixStringContextElem` data type, but kept `PathSet context`
as an awkward middle ground between internal `char[][]` interpreter heap
string contexts and `NixStringContext` fully parsed string contexts.
The infelicity of `PathSet context` was specifically called out during
Nix team group review, but it was agreeing that fixing it could be left
as future work. This is that future work.
A possible follow-up step would be to get rid of the `char[][]`
evaluator heap representation, too, but it is not yet clear how to do
that. To use `NixStringContextElem` there we would need to get the STL
containers to GC pointers in the GC build, and I am not sure how to do
that.
----
PR #7543 effectively is writing the inverse of a `mkPathString`,
`mkOutputString`, and one more such function for the `DrvDeep` case. I
would like that PR to have property tests ensuring it is actually the
inverse as expected.
This PR sets things up nicely so that reworking that PR to be in that
more elegant and better tested way is possible.
Co-authored-by: Théophane Hufschmitt <7226587+thufschmitt@users.noreply.github.com>
We had some local variables left over from the older (more
complicated) implementation of this function. They should all be unused,
but one wasn't by mistake.
Delete them all, and replace the one that was still in use as intended.
Prior to this change, we had a bunch of ad-hoc string manipulation code
scattered around. This made it hard to figure out what data model for
string contexts is.
Now, we still store string contexts most of the time as encoded strings
--- I was wary of the performance implications of changing that --- but
whenever we parse them we do so only through the
`NixStringContextElem::parse` method, which handles all cases. This
creates a data type that is very similar to `DerivedPath` but:
- Represents the funky `=<drvpath>` case as properly distinct from the
others.
- Only encodes a single output, no wildcards and no set, for the
"built" case.
(I would like to deprecate `=<path>`, after which we are in spitting
distance of `DerivedPath` and could maybe get away with fewer types, but
that is another topic for another day.)
this slightly increases the amount of memory used for any given symbol, but this
increase is more than made up for if the symbol is referenced more than once in
the EvalState that holds it. on average every symbol should be referenced at
least twice (once to introduce a binding, once to use it), so we expect no
increase in memory on average.
symbol tables are limited to 2³² entries like position tables, and similar
arguments apply to why overflow is not likely: 2³² symbols would require as many
string instances (at 24 bytes each) and map entries (at 24 bytes or more each,
assuming that the map holds on average at most one item per bucket as the docs
say). a full symbol table would require at least 192GB of memory just for
symbols, which is well out of reach. (an ofborg eval of nixpks today creates
less than a million symbols!)
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.
1. `DerivationOutput` now as the `std::variant` as a base class. And the
variants are given hierarchical names under `DerivationOutput`.
In 8e0d0689be @matthewbauer and I
didn't know a better idiom, and so we made it a field. But this sort
of "newtype" is anoying for literals downstream.
Since then we leaned the base class, inherit the constructors trick,
e.g. used in `DerivedPath`. Switching to use that makes this more
ergonomic, and consistent.
2. `store-api.hh` and `derivations.hh` are now independent.
In bcde5456cc I swapped the dependency,
but I now know it is better to just keep on using incomplete types as
much as possible for faster compilation and good separation of
concerns.
we'll retain the old coerceToString interface that returns a string, but callers
that don't need the returned value to outlive the Value it came from can save
copies by using the new interface instead. for values that weren't stringy we'll
pass a new buffer argument that'll be used for storage and shouldn't be
inspected.
Previously you had to remember to call value->attrs->sort() after
populating value->attrs. Now there is a BindingsBuilder helper that
wraps Bindings and ensures that sort() is called before you can use
it.
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)))) {
Most functions now take a StorePath argument rather than a Path (which
is just an alias for std::string). The StorePath constructor ensures
that the path is syntactically correct (i.e. it looks like
<store-dir>/<base32-hash>-<name>). Similarly, functions like
buildPaths() now take a StorePathWithOutputs, rather than abusing Path
by adding a '!<outputs>' suffix.
Note that the StorePath type is implemented in Rust. This involves
some hackery to allow Rust values to be used directly in C++, via a
helper type whose destructor calls the Rust type's drop()
function. The main issue is the dynamic nature of C++ move semantics:
after we have moved a Rust value, we should not call the drop function
on the original value. So when we move a value, we set the original
value to bitwise zero, and the destructor only calls drop() if the
value is not bitwise zero. This should be sufficient for most types.
Also lots of minor cleanups to the C++ API to make it more modern
(e.g. using std::optional and std::string_view in some places).
