Most functions now take a StorePath argument rather than a Path (which
is just an alias for std::string). The StorePath constructor ensures
that the path is syntactically correct (i.e. it looks like
<store-dir>/<base32-hash>-<name>). Similarly, functions like
buildPaths() now take a StorePathWithOutputs, rather than abusing Path
by adding a '!<outputs>' suffix.
Note that the StorePath type is implemented in Rust. This involves
some hackery to allow Rust values to be used directly in C++, via a
helper type whose destructor calls the Rust type's drop()
function. The main issue is the dynamic nature of C++ move semantics:
after we have moved a Rust value, we should not call the drop function
on the original value. So when we move a value, we set the original
value to bitwise zero, and the destructor only calls drop() if the
value is not bitwise zero. This should be sufficient for most types.
Also lots of minor cleanups to the C++ API to make it more modern
(e.g. using std::optional and std::string_view in some places).
E.g.
$ time nix cat-store --store https://cache.nixos.org?local-nar-cache=/tmp/nars \
/nix/store/b0w2hafndl09h64fhb86kw6bmhbmnpm1-blender-2.79/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/blender.svg > /dev/null
real 0m4.139s
$ time nix cat-store --store https://cache.nixos.org?local-nar-cache=/tmp/nars \
/nix/store/b0w2hafndl09h64fhb86kw6bmhbmnpm1-blender-2.79/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/blender.svg > /dev/null
real 0m0.024s
(Before, the second call took ~0.220s.)
This will use a NAR listing in
/tmp/nars/b0w2hafndl09h64fhb86kw6bmhbmnpm1.ls containing all metadata,
including the offsets of regular files inside the NAR. Thus, we don't
need to read the entire NAR. (We do read the entire listing, but
that's generally pretty small. We could use a SQLite DB by borrowing
some more code from nixos-channel-scripts/file-cache.hh.)
This is primarily useful when Hydra is serving files from an S3 binary
cache, in particular when you have giant NARs. E.g. we had some 12 GiB
NARs, so accessing individuals files was pretty slow.
This speeds up commands like "nix cat-store". For example:
$ time nix cat-store --store https://cache.nixos.org?local-nar-cache=/tmp/nar-cache /nix/store/i60yncmq6w9dyv37zd2k454g0fkl3arl-systemd-234/etc/udev/udev.conf
real 0m4.336s
$ time nix cat-store --store https://cache.nixos.org?local-nar-cache=/tmp/nar-cache /nix/store/i60yncmq6w9dyv37zd2k454g0fkl3arl-systemd-234/etc/udev/udev.conf
real 0m0.045s
The primary motivation is to allow hydra-server to serve files from S3
binary caches. Previously Hydra had a hack to do "nix-store -r
<path>", but that fetches the entire closure so is prohibitively
expensive.
There is no garbage collection of the NAR cache yet. Also, the entire
NAR is read when accessing a single member file. We could generate the
NAR listing to provide random access.
Note: the NAR cache is indexed by the store path hash, not the content
hash, so NAR caches should not be shared between binary caches, unless
you're sure that all your builds are binary-reproducible.
Eelco Dolstra