2022-12-19 Nixpkgs Architecture Team Meeting #22

Infinisil · December 19, 2022, 6:09pm

Nixpkgs Architecture Team Meeting #22

@roberth: More declarative, describe the end goal
- avoid discussing implementation details of tooling, and focus on API/structure.
- “The unit directory contains a set of self-contained pieces of Nix code that don’t reference any files outside their own subtree”:

Can/should we modify nix edit to stop relying on meta.position?
@roberth: Can see it working
Don’t mention it for now, it could derail the conversation
@growpotkin: “Your scientists were so busy asking if they could…”
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3j9muCo4o0

@infinisil: Should we link back to the NAT issues, etc in RFCs?
@tomberek: Some amount of linking is okay
@infinisil: Link to GitHub - nixpkgs-architecture/simple-package-paths: Nix RFC draft for auto-calling packages in nixpkgs at the top of the RFC
@roberth: RFC should be self-contained, should be discussed in the RFC PR
@infinisil: Archive the original repo?
@growpotkin, @roberth: Single source of truth, should improve the RFC if it doesn’t contain everything needed
@infinisil: The other way around: Link from original repo to RFC PR and archive

@roberth: Everybody goes over it, makes PR’s to improve it, accept in the meeting
@growpotkin: make a “pre-release” branch and review as a merge?
- @roberth: Probably not needed
@infinisil: Have 0 open issues and PRs

@tomberek: Is this needed? If yes we might need to wait until we can rely on a Nix version with that change
@growpotkin: It’s only an optimization, not concerned

@tomberek: Like pkgs.sharded.open.openoffice

@growpotkin: Aliasing problems, syncing one attribute with another, particularly with overrides, e.g. should pkgs.sharded.* or pkgs.* be overridden, does it apply to the other?
@infinisil: Can be done later, if at all needed
@infinisil: pkgs.hello.unitDirectory, a bit like pkgs.hello.meta.position
@roberth: (Relative paths?)

everbody: Go through the entire RFC draft in GitHub - nixpkgs-architecture/simple-package-paths: Nix RFC draft for auto-calling packages in nixpkgs and make a PR for anything that needs changing
@Ericson2314 and @growpotkin will continue with Read file type by aakropotkin · Pull Request #7447 · NixOS/nix · GitHub, especially testing it on Darwin
@infinisil will continue writing the tooling in Add a simple tool to print Nix path references by infinisil · Pull Request #22 · nixpkgs-architecture/simple-package-paths · GitHub
@Ericson2314 will talk to the Cargo people on Zulip about sharding. @infinisil will have an account so @Ericson2314 can ping and not be single point of failure.
- Ask git too, maybe. They do for .git/objects.
  - @growpotkin: I’d be shocked if GitHub knew implementation details of git objects.