[Nix-dev] Typing nix − funding campaign

[Théophane Hufschmitt]

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the donation :)

I don't plan to try making this builtin into the nix codebase (at least not
for now) for several reasons, essentially :

- As I explained to Peter, the code will be in OCaml, so it won't be
  mergeable at all.

- The tool will probably only be useful for nix developpers, and it
  makes sense to me that it is not shipped with nix, as it won't be of
  any use to the casual user.

- This would be a huge modification for nix, so it won't be worth
  merging anyway until the tool is polished enough (so not before the
  end of the internship).

I'd want to support exactly the same syntax as nix does. That would
mean (depending of the position of the nix core-dev team about this)
either that the nix syntax would be extended to support type
annotations, either that those would be included in comments.

Thu 12 Jan 17 − 14:33, Thomas Hunger(tehunger at gmail.com) a écrit:
> Hi,
> 
> Many thanks for giving this a shot, it's exciting! I donated some money and
> I hope we'll get this rolling soon.
> 
> I have a few questions:
> 
> * Is the plan to merge this into the current nix c++ code base? If so: Do
> you have some buy-in from the nix maintainers?
> * If it's an external tool: would it compile to untyped nix, like e.g. flow
> and TypeScript do?
> 
> ~
> 
> 
> 
> On 12 January 2017 at 13:13, Théophane Hufschmitt <rg_nixos at regnat.ovh>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am Théophane Hufschmitt, a french master degree CS student, and I
> > wish to start a six month length internship on giving nix a type
> > system.
> >
> > Numtide offered to fund a part of the internship, but we still need
> > some help for me to be able to start it.
> >
> > The goal of the internship is to design (and implement) a type system
> > for nix in order to be able to statically get some guaranties about
> > the well-foundness of the nixpkgs repo (or any nix expression), in
> > complement to hydra or travis tests which may let some inconsistencies
> > pass − especially on nixos module system which is way harder to test.
> >
> > Providing nix with a proper type system is a long running issue (see
> > https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/14), and I think a huge
> > opportunity for nix to improve its awesomeness.
> >
> > The crowdfunding campaign (and a slightly more detailled description of
> > the project) is open at https://www.gofundme.com/typing-nix, and you
> > are all invited to donate.
> >
> > Of course, I'll be happy to answer any question, by mail or on
> > irc/matrix (I am regnat[m] on freenode).
> >
> > --
> > Théophane Hufschmitt
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > nix-dev mailing list
> > nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
> >
> >

-- 
Théophane Hufschmitt
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