[Nix-dev] Source URL breakage – please can we improve the determinism

[Bjørn Forsman]

On 8 May 2016 at 02:19, J. R. Haigh <james.r.haigh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Nix project leaders,
>         I don't find NixOS to be very deterministic at all, and it's nearly always for the same reason: source files on random servers scattered across the Internet going walkabouts.
>         Please can we have all source files hosted by the Nix project and all source URLs in nixpkgs and nixpkgs-channels replaced or accompanied by the Nix-hosted copies.

+1. Except I don't think we should change the URLs in nixpkgs, those
should still point to upstream. IMO, Nix fetchers should be
configurable to try Nix mirrors before (or after) the given URLs in
Nix package files.

> Ideally there should be a way to specify multiple URLs for each source file, so both the original and the Nix-hosted locations can be specified, as well as any other mirrors if there are any.

That is already possible. For instance, fetchurl can take a list of
urls in the "urls" attribute (note the 's'). (But again, I'd prefer to
not have to specify these Nix provided backup URLs manually for each
package, better do that globally.)

> In this specific instance, please could someone with commit access resolve this breakage a.s.a.p.?: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/blob/nixos-15.09/pkgs/tools/misc/moreutils/default.nix

That was fixed just a couple of days ago. But unfortunately it takes a
while for the change to hit the channel :-( (Until then, build from
git.)

Best regards,
Bjørn Forsman