Add a page explaining what “experimental features” are, when and how they should be used
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Co-authored-by: Eelco Dolstra <edolstra@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: John Ericson <John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems>
the semantics are not explained in the referenced section any more, they
have been moved to the documentation for common options in the new CLI [0].
[0]: 703d863a48
Documentation on "classic" commands with many sub-commands are
notoriously hard to discover due to lack of overview and anchor links.
Additionally the information on common options and environment variables
is not accessible offline in man pages, and therefore often overlooked
by readers.
With this change, each sub-command of nix-store and nix-env gets its
own page in the manual (listed in the table of contents), and each own
man page.
Also, man pages for each subcommand now (again) list common options
and environment variables. While this makes each page quite long and
some common parameters don't apply, this should still make it easier
to navigate as that additional information was not accessible on the
command line at all.
It is now possible to run 'nix-store --<subcommand> --help` to display
help pages for the given subcommand.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
This provides a platform-independent way to configure the SSL
certificates file in the Nix daemon. Previously we provided
instructions for overriding the environment variable in launchd, but
that obviously doesn't work with systemd. Now we can just tell users
to add
ssl-cert-file = /etc/ssl/my-certificate-bundle.crt
to their nix.conf.
Add the --base64 and --sri flags for the Base64 and SRI format output.
Add the --base16 flag to explicitly specify the hexadecimal format.
Add the --to-base64 and --to-sri flag to convert a hash to the above
mentioned format.
the term was hard to discover, as its definition and explanation were in
a very long document lacking an overview section.
search did not help because it occurs so often.
- clarify wording in the definition
- add an overview of installable types
- add "installable" to glossary
- link to definition from occurrences of the term
- be more precise about where store derivation outputs are processed
- installable Nix expressions must evaluate to a derivation
Co-authored-by: Adam Joseph <54836058+amjoseph-nixpkgs@users.noreply.github.com>
The release notes document the change in behavior, I don't include it
here so there is no risk to it getting out of sync.
> Motivation
>> Plumbing CLI should be simple
Store derivation installations are intended as "plumbing": very simple
utilities for advanced users and scripts, and not what regular users
interact with. (Similarly, regular Git users will use branch and tag
names not explicit hashes for most things.)
The plumbing CLI should prize simplicity over convenience; that is its
raison d'etre. If the user provides a path, we should treat it the same
way not caring what sort of path it is.
>> Scripting
This is especially important for the scripting use-case. when arbitrary
paths are sent to e.g. `nix copy` and the script author wants consistent
behavior regardless of what those store paths are. Otherwise the script
author needs to be careful to filter out `.drv` ones, and then run `nix
copy` again with those paths and `--derivation`. That is not good!
>> Surprisingly low impact
Only two lines in the tests need changing, showing that the impact of
this is pretty light.
Many command, like `nix log` will continue to work with just the
derivation passed as before. This because we used to:
- Special case the drv path and replace it with it's outputs (what this
gets rid of).
- Turn those output path *back* into the original drv path.
Now we just skip that entire round trip!
> Context
Issue #7261 lays out a broader vision for getting rid of `--derivation`,
and has this as one of its dependencies. But we can do this with or
without that.
`Installable::toDerivations` is changed to handle the case of a
`DerivedPath::Opaque` ending in `.drv`, which is new: it simply doesn't
need to do any extra work in that case. On this basis, commands like
`nix {show-derivation,log} /nix/store/...-foo.drv` still work as before,
as described above.
When testing older daemons, the post-build-hook will be run against the
old CLI, so we need the old version of the post-build-hook to support
that use-case.
Co-authored-by: Travis A. Everett <travis.a.everett@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
- `nixpkgsFor` does all of native, static, cross, and the different stdenvs.
- The main Nix derivation is no longer duplicated for static.
- DRY nixpkgs.lib and lib.genAttrs calls.
- Refer to current version in readme
- Split into flakes and non-flakes section
- Change order to move nix-build to the end, since people often start
with it in the beginning.
- Use proper "Note" syntax
- Add notes about editor integration
- Move information about target platforms and stdenvs into separate
sections
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Co-authored-by: Alexander Bantyev <alexander.bantyev@tweag.io>
Co-authored-by: Théophane Hufschmitt <theophane.hufschmitt@tweag.io>
XDG Base Directory is a standard for locations for storing various
files. Nix has a few files which seem to fit in the standard, but
currently use a custom location directly in the user's ~, polluting
it:
- ~/.nix-profile
- ~/.nix-defexpr
- ~/.nix-channels
This commit adds a config option (use-xdg-base-directories) to follow
the XDG spec and instead use the following locations:
- $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/profile
- $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/defexpr
- $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/channels
If $XDG_STATE_HOME is not set, it is assumed to be ~/.local/state.
Co-authored-by: Théophane Hufschmitt <7226587+thufschmitt@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Tim Fenney <kodekata@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: pasqui23 <pasqui23@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Artturin <Artturin@artturin.com>
Co-authored-by: John Ericson <Ericson2314@Yahoo.com>
`clang11StdenvPackages` does not exist
```
│ └───x86_64-linux
│ ├───ccacheStdenv: development environment 'nix'
│ ├───clang11Stdenv: development environment 'nix'
│ ├───clangStdenv: development environment 'nix'
│ ├───default: development environment 'nix'
│ ├───gccStdenv: development environment 'nix'
│ ├───libcxxStdenv: development environment 'nix'
│ └───stdenv: development environment 'nix'
```
Commit 14bc3ce3d6 (0.13~43) changed the
timestamps in the Nix store from 0 to 1. Update the nix-store man
page to match.
Signed-off-by: Anders Kaseorg <andersk@mit.edu>
Allows checking directory entry type of a single file/directory.
This was added to optimize the use of `builtins.readDir` on some
filesystems and operating systems which cannot detect this information
using POSIX's `readdir`.
Previously `builtins.readDir` would eagerly use system calls to lookup
these filetypes using other interfaces; this change makes these
operations lazy in the attribute values for each file with application
of `builtins.readFileType`.
this form is much easier to maintain (also with minimal diffs), and
allows for more details on each operator.
this change a purely mechanical transformation, without changing any contents.
Adds a new boolean structured attribute
`outputChecks.<output>.unsafeDiscardReferences` which disables scanning
an output for runtime references.
__structuredAttrs = true;
outputChecks.out.unsafeDiscardReferences = true;
This is useful when creating filesystem images containing their own embedded Nix
store: they are self-contained blobs of data with no runtime dependencies.
Setting this attribute requires the experimental feature
`discard-references` to be enabled.
This makes 'nix develop' set the Linux personality in the same way
that the actual build does, allowing a command like 'nix develop
nix#devShells.i686-linux.default' on x86_64-linux to work correctly.
First, logic is consolidated in the shell script instead of being spread
between them and makefiles. That makes understanding what is going on a
little easier.
This would not be super interesting by itself, but it gives us a way to
debug tests more easily. *That* in turn I hope is much more compelling.
See the updated manual for details.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Co-authored-by: Eelco Dolstra <edolstra@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
this avoids incorrect rendering on the man pages, since `lowdown`
neither parses the anchor syntax nor HTML.
this should rather be fixed in lowdown, as adding more anchors
would otherwise produce ever more noise and error-prone repetition.
* docs: Use secret-key-files when demonstrating post-build-hooks
The docs used to recommend calling `nix store sign` in a post-build
hook, but on more recent versions of nix, this results in unsigned
store paths being copied into binary caches. See
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/6960 for details.
Instead, use the `secret-key-files` config option, which signs all
locally-built derivations with the private key.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
These only functioned if a very narrow combination of conditions held:
- The result path does not yet exist (--check did not result in
repeated builds), AND
- The result path is not available from any configured substituters, AND
- No remote builders that can build the path are available.
If any of these do not hold, a derivation would be built 0 or 1 times
regardless of the repeat option. Thus, remove it to avoid confusion.
after discussing this with multiple people, I'm convinced that "build
task" is more precise: a derivation is not an action, but inert until it
is built. also it's easier to pronounce.
proposal: use "build task" for the generic concept "description of how
to derive new files from the contents of existing files". then it will
be easier to distinguish what we mean by "derivation" (a specific data
structure and Nix language value type) and "store derivation" (a
serialisation of a derivation into a file in the Nix store).
Specifically, explain why Nix does not _re_evaluate paths during a
`nix repl` session. This is a thing that bit me while playing around
with paths and antiquotation in `nix repl` while reading the Nix
language tutorial at https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Mainly:
- Try to triangulate between narrative that framed this as
a new/easy process and the need for a reference that will
not quickly grow stale.
- Fix a ~continuity issue where the text was talking about
"your Cachix cache" before saying that you'd need to make
a Cachix cache to enable the installer tests.
- Adopt suggestion on titling, and nest subtitles in the
installer test section.
Nix veterans intuitively know what the following terms mean. They are
used in several places in the nix documentation, but never defined:
- local store
- remote store
- binary cache
- substituter
In particular, I found the last two terms to be confusingly similar.
Let's give definitions for them.
