It's slower than ExprVar since it doesn't compute a static
displacement. Since we're not using the throw primop in the
implementation of <...> anymore, it's also not really needed.
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.
This allows error messages like:
error: the anonymous function at `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix:1:1'
called without required argument `foo', at
`/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs/lib/modules.nix:77:59'
Fixes#121. Note that we don't warn about missing $NIX_PATH entries
because it's intended that some may be missing (cf. the default
$NIX_PATH on NixOS, which includes paths like /etc/nixos/nixpkgs for
backward compatibility).
Now, in addition to a."${b}".c, you can write a.${b}.c (applicable
wherever dynamic attributes are valid).
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
This doesn't change any functionality but moves some behavior out of the
parser and into the evaluator in order to simplify the code.
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
Since addAttr has to iterate through the AttrPath we pass it, it makes
more sense to just iterate through the AttrNames in addAttr instead. As
an added bonus, this allows attrsets where two dynamic attribute paths
have the same static leading part (see added test case for an example
that failed previously).
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
This adds new syntax for attribute names:
* attrs."${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>
Since we already cache files in normal form (fileEvalCache), caching
parse trees is redundant.
Note that getting rid of this cache doesn't actually save much memory
at the moment, because parse trees are currently not freed / GC'ed.
This reduces the difference between inherited and non-inherited
attribute handling to the choice of which env to use (in recs and lets)
by setting the AttrDef::e to a new ExprVar in the parser rather than
carrying a separate AttrDef::v VarRef member.
As an added bonus, this allows inherited attributes that inherit from a
with to delay forcing evaluation of the with's attributes.
Signed-off-by: Shea Levy <shea@shealevy.com>
Functions in Nix are anonymous, but if they're assigned to a
variable/attribute, we can use the variable/attribute name in error
messages, e.g.
while evaluating `concatMapStrings' at `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs/pkgs/lib/strings.nix:18:25':
...
Wacky string coercion semantics caused expressions like
exec = "${./my-script} params...";
to evaluate to a path (‘/path/my-script params’), because
anti-quotations are desuged to string concatenation:
exec = ./my-script + " params...";
By constrast, adding a space at the start would yield a string as
expected:
exec = " ${./my-script} params...";
Now the first example also evaluates to a string.
directory
/home/eelco/src/stdenv-updates
that you want to use as the directory for import such as
with (import <nixpkgs> { });
then you can say
$ nix-build -I nixpkgs=/home/eelco/src/stdenv-updates
brackets, e.g.
import <nixpkgs/pkgs/lib>
are resolved by looking them up relative to the elements listed in
the search path. This allows us to get rid of hacks like
import "${builtins.getEnv "NIXPKGS_ALL"}/pkgs/lib"
The search path can be specified through the ‘-I’ command-line flag
and through the colon-separated ‘NIX_PATH’ environment variable,
e.g.,
$ nix-build -I /etc/nixos ...
If a file is not found in the search path, an error message is
lazily thrown.
write ‘attrs ? a.b’ to test whether ‘attrs’ has an attribute ‘a’
containing an attribute ‘b’. This is more convenient than ‘attrs ?
a && attrs.a ? b’.
Slight change in the semantics: it's no longer an error if the
left-hand side of ‘?’ is not an attribute set. In that case it just
returns false. So, ‘null ? foo’ no longer throws an error.
