It was holding on to a Value* (i.e. a std::shared_ptr<ValidPathInfo>*)
outside of the pathInfoCache lock, so the std::shared_ptr could be
destroyed between the release of the lock and the decrement of the
std::shared_ptr refcount. This can happen if more than
'path-info-cache-size' paths are added in the meantime, *or* if
clearPathInfoCache() is called. The hydra-queue-runner queue monitor
thread periodically calls the later, so is likely to trigger a crash.
Fixes https://github.com/NixOS/hydra/issues/542.
This is useless because the client also caches path info, and can
cause problems for long-running clients like hydra-queue-runner
(i.e. it may return cached info about paths that have been
garbage-collected).
Caching path info is generally useful. For instance, it speeds up "nix
path-info -rS /run/current-system" (i.e. showing the closure sizes of
all paths in the closure of the current system) from 5.6s to 0.15s.
This also eliminates some APIs like Store::queryDeriver() and
Store::queryReferences().
