FAQ/Pinning Nixpkgs: Difference between revisions

Vater (talk | contribs)
mNo edit summary
Sandro (talk | contribs)
Drop pre nix 2.0, warn about negatives of pinning
 
Line 8: Line 8:


Note: You can <code>sudo nix-channel --remove nixpkgs</code>, but you still need a nix-channel for nixos
Note: You can <code>sudo nix-channel --remove nixpkgs</code>, but you still need a nix-channel for nixos
Be aware that this also pins all dependencies of the application which often causes issues for GUI applications and also brings in back outdated and potentially vulnerable dependencies.


<pre>
<pre>
Line 13: Line 15:
nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-21.05
nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-21.05
</pre>
</pre>
== Nix 2.0 onwards ==


Nix 2.0 introduces new builtins, <code>fetchTarball</code> and <code>fetchGit</code>, which make it possible to fetch a specific version of nixpkgs without depending on an existing one:
Nix 2.0 introduces new builtins, <code>fetchTarball</code> and <code>fetchGit</code>, which make it possible to fetch a specific version of nixpkgs without depending on an existing one:
Line 29: Line 29:
</syntaxhighlight>
</syntaxhighlight>


Or, to use git for fetching<!-- (this has the advantage of being somewhat faster for updates, but is slower for the initial fetch) [not true anymore, the repository sharing mechanism has been disabled (https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/2358)]-->:
Or, to use git for fetching:


<syntaxhighlight lang="nix">
<syntaxhighlight lang="nix">
Line 51: Line 51:
while evaluating anonymous function at /nix/store/b93cq865x6qxpn4dw9ivrk3yjcsm8r97-nixos-19.09/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:142:17, called from undefined position:
while evaluating anonymous function at /nix/store/b93cq865x6qxpn4dw9ivrk3yjcsm8r97-nixos-19.09/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:142:17, called from undefined position:
program 'git' failed with exit code 128
program 'git' failed with exit code 128
</syntaxhighlight>
== Before 2.0 ==
The following code uses the host's Nixpkgs as a
springboard to fetch and import a specific, pinned version of Nixpkgs.
This is safe because the specific code we're using from the variable
host Nixpkgs is using a very stable API, and will be thrown away as
soon as we are done importing the pinned version of Nixpkgs.
Where before you would use <code>pkgs = import <nixpkgs> {}</code>
(which uses the host's Nixpkgs version) you can pin to an exact
version of Nixpkgs by instead using:
<syntaxhighlight lang="nix">
pkgs = let
  hostPkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
  pinnedPkgs = hostPkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
    owner = "NixOS";
    repo = "nixpkgs";
    # nixos-unstable as of 2017-11-13T08:53:10-00:00
    rev = "ac355040656de04f59406ba2380a96f4124ebdad";
    sha256 = "0frhc7mnx88sird6ipp6578k5badibsl0jfa22ab9w6qrb88j825";
  };
in import pinnedPkgs {}
</syntaxhighlight>
This can also be instead used to pull nixpkgs from an internal fork of
Nixpkgs, with your own changes on top. Note, however, as it stands
Nix 1.11 has difficulties fetching repositories which require
authentication, this is to be fixed in Nix 1.12.
The package <code>nix-prefetch-git</code> can be used to automatically
calculate the current version and hash of a branch, and output the
information to a file:
<syntaxhighlight>
$ nix-shell -p nix-prefetch-git
[nix-shell:~]$ nix-prefetch-git https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs.git refs/heads/nixos-unstable > nixpkgs-version.json
...
[nix-shell:~]$ cat nixpkgs-version.json
{
  "url": "https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs.git",
  "rev": "f607771d0f5e4fa905afff1c772febd9f3103e1a",
  "date": "2018-01-09T11:18:25-05:00",
  "sha256": "1icphqpdcl8akqhfij2pxkfr7wfn86z5sr3jdjh88p9vv1550dx7",
  "fetchSubmodules": true
}
</syntaxhighlight>
This file can then be used to specify the version of Nixpkgs:
<syntaxhighlight lang="nix">
pkgs = let
  hostPkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
  pinnedVersion = hostPkgs.lib.importJSON ./nixpkgs-version.json;
  pinnedPkgs = hostPkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
    owner = "NixOS";
    repo = "nixpkgs";
    inherit (pinnedVersion) rev sha256;
  };
in import pinnedPkgs {};
</syntaxhighlight>
Finally, this can be taken a step further, and you can apply extra
patches to the pinned version of Nixpkgs, for perhaps PRs that are not
yet merged, or private internal changes that you need. If you take
this route, probably best to move the following in to its own file
that you then import.
<syntaxhighlight lang="nix">
pkgs = let
  hostPkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
  pinnedVersion = hostPkgs.lib.importJSON ./nixpkgs-version.json;
  pinnedPkgs = hostPkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
    owner = "NixOS";
    repo = "nixpkgs";
    inherit (pinnedVersion) rev sha256;
  };
  patches = [
    ./patches/0001-my-nixpkgs-change.patch
  ];
  patchedPkgs = hostPkgs.runCommand "nixpkgs-${pinnedVersion.rev}"
    {
      inherit pinnedPkgs;
      inherit patches;
    }
    ''
      cp -r $pinnedPkgs $out
      chmod -R +w $out
      for p in $patches; do
        echo "Applying patch $p";
        patch -d $out -p1 < "$p";
      done
    '';
in import patchedPkgs {};
</syntaxhighlight>
</syntaxhighlight>