Nix can perform static scope checking, but whenever code is inside
a `with` expression, the analysis breaks down, because it can't
know statically what's in the attribute set whose attributes were
brought into scope. In those cases, Nix has to assume that
everything works out.
Except it doesnt. Removing `with` from lib/ revealed an undefined
variable in an error message.
If that doesn't convince you that we're better off without `with`,
I can tell you that this PR results in a 3% evaluation performance
improvement because Nix can look up local variables by index.
This adds up with applications like the module system.
Furthermore, removing `with` makes the binding site of each
variable obvious, which helps with comprehension.
This does break the API of being able to import any lib file and get
its libs, however I'm not sure people did this.
I made this while exploring being able to swap out docFn with a stub
in #2305, to avoid functor performance problems. I don't know if that
is going to move forward (or if it is a problem or not,) but after
doing all this work figured I'd put it up anyway :)
Two notable advantages to this approach:
1. when a lib inherits another lib's functions, it doesn't
automatically get put in to the scope of lib
2. when a lib implements a new obscure functions, it doesn't
automatically get put in to the scope of lib
Using the test script (later in this commit) I got the following diff
on the API:
+ diff master fixed-lib
11764a11765,11766
> .types.defaultFunctor
> .types.defaultTypeMerge
11774a11777,11778
> .types.isOptionType
> .types.isType
11781a11786
> .types.mkOptionType
11788a11794
> .types.setType
11795a11802
> .types.types
This means that this commit _adds_ to the API, however I can't find a
way to fix these last remaining discrepancies. At least none are
_removed_.
Test script (run with nix-repl in the PATH):
#!/bin/sh
set -eux
repl() {
suff=${1:-}
echo "(import ./lib)$suff" \
| nix-repl 2>&1
}
attrs_to_check() {
repl "${1:-}" \
| tr ';' $'\n' \
| grep "\.\.\." \
| cut -d' ' -f2 \
| sed -e "s/^/${1:-}./" \
| sort
}
summ() {
repl "${1:-}" \
| tr ' ' $'\n' \
| sort \
| uniq
}
deep_summ() {
suff="${1:-}"
depth="${2:-4}"
depth=$((depth - 1))
summ "$suff"
for attr in $(attrs_to_check "$suff" | grep -v "types.types"); do
if [ $depth -eq 0 ]; then
summ "$attr" | sed -e "s/^/$attr./"
else
deep_summ "$attr" "$depth" | sed -e "s/^/$attr./"
fi
done
}
(
cd nixpkgs
#git add .
#git commit -m "Auto-commit, sorry" || true
git checkout fixed-lib
deep_summ > ../fixed-lib
git checkout master
deep_summ > ../master
)
if diff master fixed-lib; then
echo "SHALLOW MATCH!"
fi
(
cd nixpkgs
git checkout fixed-lib
repl .types
)