As described in #4745 it's otherwise fairly hard to understand where
this is coming from. Say you have an expression which uses e.g.
`types.package`:
``` nix
{ outputs = { self, nixpkgs }: {
packages.x86_64-linux.hello = let
foo = nixpkgs.lib.evalModules {
modules = [
{
options.foo.bar = with nixpkgs.lib; mkOption { type = types.package; };
}
{
foo.bar = ./.;
}
];
};
in builtins.trace foo.config.foo.bar.outPath nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.hello;
defaultPackage.x86_64-linux = self.packages.x86_64-linux.hello;
};
}
```
Then you'll get an error trace like this:
```
error: 'builtins.storePath' is not allowed in pure evaluation mode
at /nix/store/p4h2x6r80njkb0j2rc1xjhhl99yri3zb-source/lib/attrsets.nix:328:15:
327| let
328| path' = builtins.storePath path;
| ^
329| res =
… while evaluating the attribute 'config.foo.bar.outPath'
at /nix/store/p4h2x6r80njkb0j2rc1xjhhl99yri3zb-source/lib/attrsets.nix:332:11:
331| name = sanitizeDerivationName (builtins.substring 33 (-1) (baseNameOf path'));
332| outPath = path';
| ^
333| outputs = [ "out" ];
… while evaluating the attribute 'packages.x86_64-linux.hello'
at /nix/store/6c1rfsqzrhjw1235palzjmf5vihcpci7-source/flake.nix:3:5:
2| { outputs = { self, nixpkgs }: {
3| packages.x86_64-linux.hello = let
| ^
4| foo = nixpkgs.lib.evalModules {
```
Fixes#4745
They are equivalent according to
<https://spec.commonmark.org/0.29/#hard-line-breaks>,
and the trailing spaces tend to be a pain (because the make git
complain, editors tend to want to remove them − the `.editorconfig`
actually specifies that − etc..).
I think that it's not very helpful to get "cached failures" in a wrong
`flake.nix`. This can be very confusing when debugging a Nix expression.
See for instance NixOS/nixpkgs#118115.
In fact, the eval cache allows a forced reevaluation which is used for
e.g. `nix eval`.
This change makes sure that this is the case for `nix build` as well. So
rather than
λ ma27 [~/Projects/exp] → ../nix/outputs/out/bin/nix build -L --rebuild --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes'
error: cached failure of attribute 'defaultPackage.x86_64-linux'
the evaluation of already-evaluated (and failed) attributes looks like
this now:
λ ma27 [~/Projects/exp] → ../nix/outputs/out/bin/nix build -L --rebuild --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes'
error: attribute 'hell' missing
at /nix/store/mrnvi9ss8zn5wj6gpn4bcd68vbh42mfh-source/flake.nix:6:35:
5|
6| packages.x86_64-linux.hello = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.hell;
| ^
7|
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
When working on some more complex Nix code, there are sometimes rather
unhelpful or misleading error messages, especially if coerce-errors are
thrown.
This patch is a first steps towards improving that. I'm happy to file
more changes after that, but I'd like to gather some feedback first.
To summarize, this patch does the following things:
* Attrsets (a.k.a. `Bindings` in `libexpr`) now have a `Pos`. This is
helpful e.g. to identify which attribute-set in `listToAttrs` is
invalid.
* The `Value`-struct has a new method named `determinePos` which tries
to guess the position of a value and falls back to a default if that's
not possible.
This can be used to provide better messages if a coercion fails.
* The new `determinePos`-API is used by `builtins.concatMap` now. With
that change, Nix shows the exact position in the error where a wrong
value was returned by the lambda.
To make sure it's still obvious that `concatMap` is the problem,
another stack-frame was added.
* The changes described above can be added to every other `primop`, but
first I'd like to get some feedback about the overall approach.
