Following legacy packing conventions, `isArm` was defined just for
32-bit ARM instruction set. This is confusing to non packagers though,
because Aarch64 is an ARM instruction set.
The official ARM overview for ARMv8[1] is surprisingly not confusing,
given the overall state of affairs for ARM naming conventions, and
offers us a solution. It divides the nomenclature into three levels:
```
ISA: ARMv8 {-A, -R, -M}
/ \
Mode: Aarch32 Aarch64
| / \
Encoding: A64 A32 T32
```
At the top is the overall v8 instruction set archicture. Second are the
two modes, defined by bitwidth but differing in other semantics too, and
buttom are the encodings, (hopefully?) isomorphic if they encode the
same mode.
The 32 bit encodings are mostly backwards compatible with previous
non-Thumb and Thumb encodings, and if so we can pun the mode names to
instead mean "sets of compatable or isomorphic encodings", and then
voilà we have nice names for 32-bit and 64-bit arm instruction sets
which do not use the word ARM so as to not confused either laymen or
experienced ARM packages.
[1]: https://developer.arm.com/products/architecture/a-profile
(cherry picked from commit ba52ae5048)
Following legacy packing conventions, `isArm` was defined just for
32-bit ARM instruction set. This is confusing to non packagers though,
because Aarch64 is an ARM instruction set.
The official ARM overview for ARMv8[1] is surprisingly not confusing,
given the overall state of affairs for ARM naming conventions, and
offers us a solution. It divides the nomenclature into three levels:
```
ISA: ARMv8 {-A, -R, -M}
/ \
Mode: Aarch32 Aarch64
| / \
Encoding: A64 A32 T32
```
At the top is the overall v8 instruction set archicture. Second are the
two modes, defined by bitwidth but differing in other semantics too, and
buttom are the encodings, (hopefully?) isomorphic if they encode the
same mode.
The 32 bit encodings are mostly backwards compatible with previous
non-Thumb and Thumb encodings, and if so we can pun the mode names to
instead mean "sets of compatable or isomorphic encodings", and then
voilà we have nice names for 32-bit and 64-bit arm instruction sets
which do not use the word ARM so as to not confused either laymen or
experienced ARM packages.
[1]: https://developer.arm.com/products/architecture/a-profile
- `localSystem` is added, it strictly supercedes system
- `crossSystem`'s description mentions `localSystem` (and vice versa).
- No more weird special casing I don't even understand
TEMP
First, we need check against the host platform, not the build platform.
That's simple enough.
Second, we move away from exahustive finite case analysis (i.e.
exhaustively listing all platforms the package builds on). That only
work in a closed-world setting, where we know all platforms we might
build one. But with cross compilation, we may be building for arbitrary
platforms, So we need fancier filters. This is the closed world to open
world change.
The solution is instead of having a list of systems (strings in the form
"foo-bar"), we have a list of of systems or "patterns", i.e. attributes
that partially match the output of the parsers in `lib.systems.parse`.
The "check meta" logic treats the systems strings as an exact whitelist
just as before, but treats the patterns as a fuzzy whitelist,
intersecting the actual `hostPlatform` with the pattern and then
checking for equality. (This is done using `matchAttrs`).
The default convenience lists for `meta.platforms` are now changed to be
lists of patterns (usually a single pattern) in
`lib/systems/for-meta.nix` for maximum flexibility under this new
system.
Fixes#30902
This is a temporary workaround to make `nix-env -qa` and `nix search` ignore
broken packages as they they did before this patchset.
This patch should be reverted after `nix` gets a proper fix for this.
See NixOS/nix#1771.
This option makes `meta.evaluate` into a close approximation of the result of
evaluating `.outPath` by checking all the dependencies recursively at a cost of
2x slowdown. Note that actually evaluating `.outPath` costs some
5x-7x more because `.outPath` also computes all the hashes.
I hope this will be a temporary measure. If there is consensus around
issue #33599, then we can follow an explicit `dontCheck`, but default to
not checking during cross builds when none is given.
This pushes check-meta evaluation to derivation evaluation step, leaving all other
attributes accessible.
Before this commit:
> $ HOME=/homeless-shelter NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=$(pwd) nix-instantiate --eval --strict ./default.nix -A xen --argstr system aarch64-linux
> Package ‘xen-4.5.5’ in pkgs/applications/virtualization/xen/generic.nix:226 is not supported on ‘aarch64-linux’, refusing to evaluate.
as expected
> $ HOME=/homeless-shelter NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=$(pwd) nix-instantiate --eval --strict ./default.nix -A xen.name --argstr system aarch64-linux
> Package ‘xen-4.5.5’ in pkgs/applications/virtualization/xen/generic.nix:226 is not supported on ‘aarch64-linux’, refusing to evaluate.
> $ HOME=/homeless-shelter NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=$(pwd) nix-instantiate --eval --strict ./default.nix -A xen.meta.description --argstr system aarch64-linux
> Package ‘xen-4.5.5’ in pkgs/applications/virtualization/xen/generic.nix:226 is not supported on ‘aarch64-linux’, refusing to evaluate.
which is unfortunate since its impossible to use packages in autogenerated
documentation on all platforms.
After this commit:
> $ HOME=/homeless-shelter NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=$(pwd) nix-instantiate --eval --strict ./default.nix -A xen --argstr system aarch64-linux
still fails
> $ HOME=/homeless-shelter NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=$(pwd) nix-instantiate --eval --strict ./default.nix -A xen.name --argstr system aarch64-linux
> "xen-4.5.5"
> $ HOME=/homeless-shelter NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=$(pwd) nix-instantiate --eval --strict ./default.nix -A xen.meta.description --argstr system aarch64-linux
> "Xen hypervisor and related components (vanilla)"
- All deps go on the PATH
- CC and Bintools wrappers with their host != depender's host still get their
setup hooks run.
- Environment hooks get applied to all packages
This isn't so elegent, but eases the transition on a very significant
PR.
We now have the information to properly determine the role the
cc-wrapper dependency has, by taking advantage of `offset`. No longer
use the soon-to-be-deprecated crossConfig environment variable, the
temp hack used before this change.
4 far-reaching changes: Smaller PATH, New vars, different propagation
logic, and different hook logic
Smaller PATH
------------
`buildInputs` no longer go on the PATH at build time, as they cannot be
run when cross compiling and we don't want to special case. Simply make
a `nativeBuildInput` too if one needs them on the PATH. Fixes#21191.
Many new depedendency variables
-------------------------------
See the stdenv chapter of the nixpkgs manual. I pulled out the existing
documentation of dependency specification into a new section, and added
language for these two (and their propagated equivalents) along side
the others'.
More complex propagation logic
------------------------------
Before a propagated*XXX*Input always acted as if it was specified
directly as a *XXX*Input downstream. That's simple enough, but violates
the intended roles of each sort of dep, which has functional and not
just stylistic consequences.
The new algorithm is detailed in the manual, and ensures everything
ends up in the right place. I tried to give both an informal and formal
description, but I suspect in practice it will not make much sense
until one tries cross compiling, after which it will immediately make
sense as the only sane option.
Simplified hook logic
---------------------
Rather than `envHook` and `crossEnvHook`, whose behavior differs
depending on whether we are cross compiling or not, there is now one
hook per sort (or rather non-propagated and propagated pair of sorts)
of dependency. These new hooks have the same meaning regardless of
cross compilation. See the setup hook section of stdenv chapter of the
Nixpkgs manual for more details.
- tracing seems annoying enough
- we get errors for all packages instead of aborting on the first one
- easier to differentiate from unwanted packages (broken, unfree, etc.)
This continues #23374, which always kept around both attributes, by
always including both propagated files: `propgated-native-build-inputs`
and `propagated-build-inputs`. `nativePkgs` and `crossPkgs` are still
defined as before, however, so this change should only barely
observable.
This is an incremental step to fully keeping the dependencies separate
in all cases.
I find the separation of concerns, accumulating, then processing, easier
to follow. Also, with my yet-to-be-merged cross work, the accumulation
part will become more complex.
This requires some small changes in the stdenv, then working around the
weird choice LLVM made to hardcode @rpath in its install name, and then
lets us remove a ton of annoying workaround hacks in many of our Go
packages. With any luck this will mean less hackery going forward.
Why 6? It seems a decently high number, giving us room for more degrees
of debugging before the `set -x` sledgehammer without incurring a
mass-rebuild.
Environment variable filter in substituteAll was not precise and produced
undefined and invalid variable names. Vladimír Čunát tried to fix that in [1],
but `env -0` did not work during Darwin bootstrap, so [2] reverted this change
and replaced an error due to invalid variables with a warning. Recently in #28057
John Ericson added `set -u` to `setup.sh` and undefined variables made the setup
fail during e.g. `nix-build -A gnat` with `setup: line 519: !varName: unbound
variable`.
[1] 62fc8859c1
[2] 81df035429
This becomes necessary if more wrappers besides cc-wrapper start
supporting hardening flags. Also good to make the warning into an
error.
Also ensure interface is being used right: Not as a string, not just in
bash.
Older bash version, like those in the bootstrap tools and on macOS,
currently confuse variables defined as an empty array with undefined
variables. `${foo+"${foo[@]}"}` will prevent `set -u` problems with
empty arrays and older without making a single '' in the empty case.
Care is taken to `set +u` when running hooks so as to not break existing
packages.
This reverts commit eeabf85780.
This change suddenly makes tons of stdenv internals visible in
nativeBuildInputs of every derivation, which doesn't seem desirable.
E.g:
````
nix-repl> hello.nativeBuildInputs
[ «derivation /nix/store/bcfkyf6bhssxd2vzwgzmsbn7b5b9rpxc-patchelf-0.9.drv»
«derivation /nix/store/4wnshnz9wwanpfzcrdd76rri7pyqn9sk-paxctl-0.9.drv»
<< snip 10+ lines >>
«derivation /nix/store/d35pgh1lcg5nm0x28d899pxj30b8c9b2-gcc-wrapper-6.4.0.drv»
]
````
Additionally, instead of pulling them from `setup.sh`, route them via
Nix. This gets us one step closer to making stdenv be a plain attribute
set instead of a derivation.
Currently the logic of generating nixpkgs Hydra jobs is to walk through
the pkgs evaluated for system = "x86_64-linux", collect any derivations
and their meta.platforms values. However, that doesn't work for
packages whose meta.platforms doesn't include x86_64-linux, as just
evaluating their meta attribute raises an error so they get skipped
completely.
As a less-intrusive fix (i.e. anything than rewriting the current package
enumeration logic), allow passing `config.allowUnsupportedSystem = true`
to permit evaluating packages regardless of their platform and use that
in the package listing phase.
Fixes#25200
@vcunat and others rightly point out that it's easier to quote always,
than learn Bash's idiosyncrasies enough to know when it doesn't make a
difference.
This reverts commit 2743078f66, which
removes quotes that don't do anything, and then goes further adding
even more quotes.
It's better than the eval solution this is adding back, but until we can
rely on a particular version of bash in nix-shell, this just breaks too
much stuff.
See c94f3d5575
and https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/1483 for the better long-term
solution.
As @oxij points out in [1], this breakage is especially serious because
it changes the contents of built environments without a corresonding
change in their hashes. Also, the revert is easier than I thought.
This reverts commit 3cb745d5a6.
[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/27427#issuecomment-317293040
`nix-build pkgs/top-level/release.nix -A tarball` now succeeds.
`configureFlags = null` lead to a type error, and one overrideDrv
needed to be converted to to append a configureFlags list instead of
string due to the normalization.
Thanks @vcunat for alerting me to the issues---sorry I did not catch
them before merging my own PR.
Eventually the adapter will be removed. Moved is
- Name suffix from hostPlatform
- configurePlatforms
To not cause more breakage, the default is currently [], but
eventually it will be [ "build" "host" ], as the cross adapter makes
it today.
I took some liberties with the flags-echoing code to make it more
concise and correct. Also, a few warnings in findInputs and friends I
skipped because I am going to rewrite those anyways.
Thanks @grahamc for telling me about this great linter!
This makes those files a bit easier to read. Also, for what it's worth,
it brings us one baby step closer to handling spaces in store paths.
Also, I optimized handling of many transitive deps with read. Probably,
not very beneficial, but nice to enforce the pkg-per-line structure.
Doing so let me find much dubious code and fix it.
Two misc notes:
- `propagated-user-env-packages` also needed to be adjusted as
sometimes it is copied to/from the propagated input files.
- `local fd` should ensure that file descriptors aren't clobbered
during recursion.
Only cosmetic changes are done otherwise.
Real refactoring is left for later.
There's a small slow-down on my machine:
$ time nix-env -qa -P >/dev/null
gets from ~2.8 to ~3.5 seconds (negligible change in RAM).
That's most likely caused by sharing less computation between different
mkDerivation calls, and I plan to improve that soon.
This is a bit simpler now, but more importantly it scales better when I
double the number of sorts of dependencies as part of my cross
compilation work.
This is especially useful when not cross compiling. It means we can
remove the `stdenv.isGlibc` predicate too.
Additionally, use this to simplify the logic to choose the
appropriate libiconv derivation.
When not cross compiling, nativeBuildInputs and buildInputs have
identical behaviour. Currently that is implemented by having
mkDerivation do a concatenation of those variables in Nix code and pass
that to the builder via the nativeBuildInputs attribute.
However, that has some annoying side effects, like `foo.buildInputs`
evaluating to `[ ]` even if buildInputs were specified in the nix
expression for foo.
Instead, pass buildInputs and nativeBuildInputs in separate variables as
usual, and move the logic of cross compilation vs. native compilation to
the stdenv builder script. This is probably a tiny bit uglier but
fixes the previous problem.
Issue #4855.
If a package's meta has `knownVulnerabilities`, like so:
stdenv.mkDerivation {
name = "foobar-1.2.3";
...
meta.knownVulnerabilities = [
"CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution"
"CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation"
];
}
and a user attempts to install the package, they will be greeted with
a warning indicating that maybe they don't want to install it:
error: Package ‘foobar-1.2.3’ in ‘...default.nix:20’ is marked as insecure, refusing to evaluate.
Known issues:
- CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution
- CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation
You can install it anyway by whitelisting this package, using the
following methods:
a) for `nixos-rebuild` you can add ‘foobar-1.2.3’ to
`nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages` in the configuration.nix,
like so:
{
nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages = [
"foobar-1.2.3"
];
}
b) For `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-shell` or any other Nix command you can add
‘foobar-1.2.3’ to `permittedInsecurePackages` in
~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix, like so:
{
permittedInsecurePackages = [
"foobar-1.2.3"
];
}
Adding either of these configurations will permit this specific
version to be installed. A third option also exists:
NIXPKGS_ALLOW_INSECURE=1 nix-build ...
though I specifically avoided having a global file-based toggle to
disable this check. This way, users don't disable it once in order to
get a single package, and then don't realize future packages are
insecure.
If a package's meta has `knownVulnerabilities`, like so:
stdenv.mkDerivation {
name = "foobar-1.2.3";
...
meta.knownVulnerabilities = [
"CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution"
"CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation"
];
}
and a user attempts to install the package, they will be greeted with
a warning indicating that maybe they don't want to install it:
error: Package ‘foobar-1.2.3’ in ‘...default.nix:20’ is marked as insecure, refusing to evaluate.
Known issues:
- CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution
- CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation
You can install it anyway by whitelisting this package, using the
following methods:
a) for `nixos-rebuild` you can add ‘foobar-1.2.3’ to
`nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages` in the configuration.nix,
like so:
{
nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages = [
"foobar-1.2.3"
];
}
b) For `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-shell` or any other Nix command you can add
‘foobar-1.2.3’ to `permittedInsecurePackages` in
~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix, like so:
{
permittedInsecurePackages = [
"foobar-1.2.3"
];
}
Adding either of these configurations will permit this specific
version to be installed. A third option also exists:
NIXPKGS_ALLOW_INSECURE=1 nix-build ...
though I specifically avoided having a global file-based toggle to
disable this check. This way, users don't disable it once in order to
get a single package, and then don't realize future packages are
insecure.
[N.B., this package also applies to the commits that follow it in the same
PR.]
In most cases, buildPackages = pkgs so things work just as before. For
cross compiling, however, buildPackages is resolved as the previous
bootstrapping stage. This allows us to avoid the mkDerivation hacks cross
compiling currently uses today.
To avoid a massive refactor, callPackage will splice together both package
sets. Again to avoid churn, it uses the old `nativeDrv` vs `crossDrv` to do
so. So now, whether cross compiling or not, packages with get a `nativeDrv`
and `crossDrv`---in the non-cross-compiling case they are simply the same
derivation. This is good because it reduces the divergence between the
cross and non-cross dataflow. See `pkgs/top-level/splice.nix` for a comment
along the lines of the preceding paragraph, and the code that does this
splicing.
Also, `forceNativeDrv` is replaced with `forceNativePackages`. The latter
resolves `pkgs` unless the host platform is different from the build
platform, in which case it resolves to `buildPackages`. Note that the
target platform is not important here---it will not prevent
`forcedNativePackages` from resolving to `pkgs`.
--------
Temporarily, we make preserve some dubious decisions in the name of preserving
hashes:
Most importantly, we don't distinguish between "host" and "target" in the
autoconf sense. This leads to the proliferation of *Cross derivations
currently used. What we ought to is resolve native deps of the cross "build
packages" (build = host != target) package set against the "vanilla
packages" (build = host = target) package set. Instead, "build packages"
uses itself, with (informally) target != build in all cases.
This is wrong because it violates the "sliding window" principle of
bootstrapping stages that shifting the platform triple of one stage to the
left coincides with the next stage's platform triple. Only because we don't
explicitly distinguish between "host" and "target" does it appear that the
"sliding window" principle is preserved--indeed it is over the reductionary
"platform double" of just "build" and "host/target".
Additionally, we build libc, libgcc, etc in the same stage as the compilers
themselves, which is wrong because they are used at runtime, not build
time. Fixing this is somewhat subtle, and the solution and problem will be
better explained in the commit that does fix it.
Commits after this will solve both these issues, at the expense of breaking
cross hashes. Native hashes won't be broken, thankfully.
--------
Did the temporary ugliness pan out? Of the packages that currently build in
`release-cross.nix`, the only ones that have their hash changed are
`*.gcc.crossDrv` and `bootstrapTools.*.coreutilsMinimal`. In both cases I
think it doesn't matter.
1. GCC when doing a `build = host = target = foreign` build (maximally
cross), still defines environment variables like `CPATH`[1] with
packages. This seems assuredly wrong because whether gcc dynamically
links those, or the programs built by gcc dynamically link those---I
have no idea which case is reality---they should be foreign. Therefore,
in all likelihood, I just made the gcc less broken.
2. Coreutils (ab)used the old cross-compiling infrastructure to depend on
a native version of itself. When coreutils was overwritten to be built
with fewer features, the native version it used would also be
overwritten because the binding was tight. Now it uses the much looser
`BuildPackages.coreutils` which is just fine as a richer build dep
doesn't cause any problems and avoids a rebuild.
So, in conclusion I'd say the conservatism payed off. Onward to actually
raking the muck in the next PR!
[1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Environment-Variables.html
`stripHash` documentation states that it prints out the stripped name to
the stdout, but the function stored the value in `strippedName`
instead.
Basically all usages did something like
`$(stripHash $foo | echo $strippedName)` which is just braindamaged.
Fixed the implementation and all invocations.
This is similar to `overrideDerivation`, but overrides the arguments to
`mkDerivation` instead of the underlying `derivation` call.
Also update `makeOverridable` so that uses of `overrideAttrs` can be
followed by `override` and `overrideDerivation`, i.e. they can be
mix-and-matched.
Close#15803. This avoids the error:
while setting up the build environment: executing
‘/nix/store/7sb42axk5lrxqz45nldrb2pchlys14s1-bash-4.3-p42/bin/bash’:
Argument list too long
Note: I wanted to make it optional based on buildCommand length,
but that seems pointless as I'm sure it's less performant.
Amended by vcunat:
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/15803#issuecomment-224841225
On Linux, paxctl's setup hook should overwrite the paxmark stub, but the
stub is defined after the setup hooks are sourced, so the stub ends up
overwriting the real function. The result is that paxmark fails to do
anything. The fix is to define the stub before any setup hooks are
sourced. Thanks to @vcunat for figuring this out.
Closes#15492
I'm giving this up. Feel free to find some reasonable variant that works
at least on Linux and Darwin. Problems encountered:
- During bootstrap of Darwin stdenv `env -0` and some bash features
don't work.
- Without `env -0` the contents of some multi-line phases is taken as
variable declarations, which wouldn't typically matter, but the PR
wanted to refuse bash-invalid names which would be occasionally
triggered. This commit dowgrades that to a warning with explanation.
It turned out that process substitution fed into a while-cycle
isn't recognized during darwin bootstrap:
http://hydra.nixos.org/build/35382446/nixlog/1/raw
Also fix broken NIX_DEBUG output, noticed by abbradar.
The set/env fix in #14907 wasn't very good, so let's use a null-delimited
approach. Suggested by Aszlig.
In particular, this should fix a mass-breakage on Darwin, though I was
unable to test that.
bash variable names may only contain alphanumeric ASCII-symbols and _,
and must not start with a number. Nix expression attribute names however
might contain nearly every character (in particular spaces and dashes).
Previously, a substitution that was not a valid bash name would be
expanded to an empty string. This commit introduce a check that throws
a (hopefully) helpful error when a wrong name is used in a substitution.
For every *.{exe,dll} in $output/bin/ we try to find all (potential)
transitive dependencies and symlink those DLLs into $output/bin
so they are found on invocation.
(DLLs are first searched in the directory of the running exe file.)
The links are relative, so relocating whole /nix/store won't break them.
The hook is activated on cygwin and when cross-compiling to mingw.
Close#14335.
Since 89036ef76a, when a package doesn't include a configure script,
the build complains with:
grep: : No such file or directory
grep: : No such file or directory
This prevents that.
Otherwise, when building glibc and other packages, the "strip" from
bootstrapTools is used, which doesn't recognise some tags produced by
the newer "ld" from binutils.
Fixes#12632.
I think it's better to quote this variable in general, because it is
common and even documented to pass space-separated commands in there.
The greps should just fail in that case and `if` won't proceed
which seems fine for such cases, and it's certainly better than
passing additional unintended parameters to grep
(which was happening all the time before).
Doing it in an openssl setup hook only works if packages have openssl
as a build input - it doesn't work if they're using a program linked
against openssl.
Commit 6d928ab684 changed this to not
preserve timestamps. However, that results in non-determinism; in
particular, it gives us a broken $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH (especially for
everything using fetchFromGitHub). Builds affected by timestamps <
1980 should be fixed in some other way (e.g. changing the timestamp to
some fixed date > 1980).
This is used by some build tools to provide reproducible builds. See
https://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/
for more info.
Later, we'll want to set this to a more intelligent value (such as the
most recent mtime of any source file).
So far if no configure script is found or no makefile,
the rest of the phase is skipped, *including* post-hooks.
I find that behavior unexpected/unintuitive.
Earlier version of this patch had problems due to me assuming
that $configureScript is always a simple path, but that turned out
to be false in many cases, e.g. perl.
The most complex problems were from dealing with switches reverted in
the meantime (gcc5, gmp6, ncurses6).
It's likely that darwin is (still) broken nontrivially.
You can now pass
separateDebugInfo = true;
to mkDerivation. This causes debug info to be separated from ELF
binaries and stored in the "debug" output. The advantage is that it
enables installing lean binaries, while still having the ability to
make sense of core dumps, etc.
Now development stuff is propagated from the first output,
and userEnvPkgs from the one with binaries.
Also don't move *.la files (yet). It causes problems, and they're small.
- there were many easy merge conflicts
- cc-wrapper needed nontrivial changes
Many other problems might've been created by interaction of the branches,
but stdenv and a few other packages build fine now.
Conflicts (simple):
pkgs/os-specific/linux/util-linux/default.nix
It seems this merge creates a new stdenv hash,
because we had changes on both branches :-/
- IMO using a temporary is not needed here (anymore),
- temporary at that location can cause a problem (in a specific case):
for example, when using the substituteAll function from nixpkgs
on a single file directly under /nix/store/ (or ./foo-file),
the stdenv's substitute tries to create a temporary directly under
/nix/store, which causes problems on chrooted darwin
(according to @copumpkin earlier today on IRC)
The old boot.spl.hostid option was not working correctly due to an
upstream bug.
Instead, now we will create the /etc/hostid file so that all applications
(including the ZFS kernel modules, ZFS user-space applications and other
unrelated programs) pick-up the same system-wide host id. Note that glibc
(and by extension, the `hostid` program) also respect the host id configured in
/etc/hostid, if it exists.
The hostid option is now mandatory when using ZFS because otherwise, ZFS will
require you to force-import your ZFS pools if you want to use them, which is
undesirable because it disables some of the checks that ZFS does to make sure it
is safe to import a ZFS pool.
The /etc/hostid file must also exist when booting the initrd, before the SPL
kernel module is loaded, so that ZFS picks up the hostid correctly.
The complexity in creating the /etc/hostid file is due to having to
write the host ID as a 32-bit binary value, taking into account the
endianness of the machine, while using only shell commands and/or simple
utilities (to avoid exploding the size of the initrd).
Getting the names of all environment variables is tricky. The previous
implementation easily got confused by multi-line variables. The new
one is more reliable but not still not perfect.
This works around a segfault in Bash 4.3, where the expression
"${!var}" (where var="-9") crashes under certain conditions.
http://hydra.nixos.org/build/16693445
Otherwise, stdenv won't have a reference to e.g. patchelf on Linux
(because it was passed in by mkDerivation). This causes the installer
tests to fail, because having "stdenv" in the installation CD closure
is not enough to pull in all stdenv packages.
http://hydra.nixos.org/build/16546643
This allows licenses like the Amazon Software License to be identified
properly while still preventing packages with those licenses from
being distributed in the Nixpkgs/NixOS channels.
