[Nix-dev] fixed-output derivation that *also* depend on (some of) its inputs?

[Shea Levy]

I suppose a flag that says to rebuild if the output is valid but doesn't have the right deriver could be what you want? But for now the best answer seems to be "change the hash when it needs to change"

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Bjørn Forsman <bjorn.forsman at gmail.com> </div><div>Date:09/21/2014  9:37 AM  (GMT-08:00) </div><div>To: Vladimír Čunát <vcunat at gmail.com> </div><div>Cc: nix-dev <nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl> </div><div>Subject: Re: [Nix-dev] fixed-output derivation that *also* depend on (some
  of) its inputs? </div><div>
</div>On 21 September 2014 08:15, Vladimír Čunát <vcunat at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/20/2014 09:55 PM, Bjørn Forsman wrote:
>>
>> Since fetchurl (via the nixos tarball mirror) downloads the same old
>> file (even though it creates a new store path), the result outputHash
>> is the same as before. So evaluation doesn't stop but continues on
>> with old/wrong data.
>
>
> If fetchurl *did* download any other data, then it would fail while checking
> the hash. That was my point. Nixos tarball mirror may be different and
> download the same content, but in any case that doesn't change the plain
> fact of the first sentence of this paragraph.
>
> I think we all agree on how fetchurl works, but I still have no idea what
> you desire. I may be an exception, but I don't see what could be done
> "between" the current fixed-output and standard derivations. Either you do
> know what exactly the output should look like and then it doesn't really
> matter how you arrive at it, or you don't know it and then you have a
> standard derivation.

I'll try to explain the issue with an example. Given the following expression:


with (import <nixpkgs> { });

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  name = "foo-0.0";

  outputHashAlgo = "sha256";
  outputHash = "0sldaa6dd6dsfm1c7f8z9i32dfhn53aw1kyrlid1naa7hb6biy4v";
  outputHashMode = "recursive";

  buildCommand = ''
    mkdir -p "$out"
    echo hello >"$out/file"
  '';
}


Build it. Then change the "echo hello >$out/file" to "echo foobar
>$out/file". The output will clearly change, but nix has cached the
result and will not do a rebuild. That's bad!

(You may at this point wonder, why use fixed-output derivation at all?
It's because the buildCommand, as is the case when packaging grails
apps, will download dependencies from the internet, so a standard
derivation will fail.)

I can work around this "caching" this by adding some hackery:

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  extraHash = builtins.hashString "sha256" (buildCommand);
  name = "foo-${extraHash}-0.0";

This results in a derivation that gets rebuilt/checked whenever
buildCommand changes. This is what I want.

But this solution feels very hackish. So my question is whether it's
possible to tell nix that certain derivation inputs affect the output,
so that when the inputs change, nix has to rebuild / re-check the
result.

It seems that when using fixed-output derivations, only the "name"
attribute matters. I think there are use cases (like the example
above) that requires other derivation inputs to be considered
important enough to do a rebuild.

Vladimir, does it make sense to you now?

Best regards,
Bjørn Forsman
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