Add "bundle" command to Nix #3880
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This adds a ‘nix export’ command which hooks into nix-bundle. It can be used in a similar way as nix-bundle, with the benefit of hooking into the new “app” functionality. For instance, $ nix export nixpkgs#jq $ ./jq --help jq - commandline JSON processor [version 1.6] ... $ scp jq machine-without-nix: $ ssh machine-without-nix ./jq jq - commandline JSON processor [version 1.6] ... Note that nix-bundle currently requires Linux to run. Other exporters might not have that requirement. “exporters” are meant to be reusable, so that, other repos can implement their own bundling. Fixes NixOS#3705
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Would this be applicable to something like the nixos-generators project? This looks like something that would require fairly substantial docs. |
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Oops, that sounds pretty down on the idea. I'm super in to it. I'd love to be able to easily export closures in some fashion, especially being pluggable. |
So this doesn't 100% fit into nixos-generators, but I think we might be able to tweak the exporters format to handle this. Right now, we are expecting the flake to be an "App", like is expected in |
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I like that the exporter is itself a derivation so we can keep this composable. |
src/nix/export.cc
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| using namespace nix; | ||
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| struct CmdExport : InstallableCommand |
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The name export is pretty vague and overloaded (e.g. we already have a nix-store --export). It's worth noting that this command does not actually export anything by itself since the build result is in the Nix store.
Maybe bundle (though that's not really correct either)?
Or an "apply" flag to nix build analogous to nix eval --apply, e.g. nix build --apply-generator github:matthewbauer/nix-bundle hello.
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Yeah, I thought export would imply it doesn't just have to be nix-bundle proper, but it is a little confusing. I suppose you could make an exporter / bundler that just produces a .nar though.
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BTW |
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Renamed from "export" to "bundle" for now. Open to other names (or consolidation with another command). I like having it be top-level as it's quite similar in function to "build" / "run", though. |
I like having a single entry point for these things since it means you don't have to guess what to run. At the very least, something like this would need hints of which store path to run. Right now "program" is just a path with context to an executable. |
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| struct CmdBundle : InstallableCommand | ||
| { | ||
| std::string bundler = "github:matthewbauer/nix-bundle"; |
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is the plan to integrate this with nixpkgs or another shared github org?
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I also would say this should be in github.com/NixOS/nix-bundle and there should be a hydra jobset to make sure all artifacts are in the binary cache.
This adds a ‘nix bundle’ command which hooks into nix-bundle. It can
be used in a similar way as nix-bundle, with the benefit of hooking
into the new “app” functionality. For instance,
Note that nix-bundle currently requires Linux to run. Other bundlers
might not have that requirement.
“bundlers” are meant to be reusable, so that, other repos can
implement their own bundling.
Fixes #3705