tvl-depot/tvix/eval
Vincent Ambo bf286a54bc refactor(tvix/eval): add a LightSpan type for lighter span tracking
This type carries the information required for calculating a
span (i.e. the chunk and offset), instead of the span itself. The span
is then only calculated in cases where it is required (when throwing
errors).

This reduces the eval time for
`builtins.length (builtins.attrNames (import <nixpkgs> {}))` by *one
third*!

The data structure in chunks that carries span information reduces
in-memory size by trading off the speed of retrieving span
information. This is because the span information is only actually
required when throwing errors (or emitting warnings).

However, somewhere along the way we grew a dependency on carrying span
information in thunks (for correctly reporting error chains). Hitting
the code paths for span retrieval was expensive, and carrying the
spans in a different way would still be less cache-efficient. This
change is the best tradeoff I could come up with.

Refs: b/229.
Change-Id: I27d4c4b5c5f9be90ac47f2db61941e123a78a77b
Reviewed-on: https://cl.tvl.fyi/c/depot/+/7558
Reviewed-by: grfn <grfn@gws.fyi>
Tested-by: BuildkiteCI
2022-12-21 22:21:25 +00:00
..
benches chore(tvix): upgrade to clap 4.0 2022-12-21 13:23:38 +00:00
builtin-macros refactor(tvix): share a Cargo.lock file between Rust projects 2022-12-15 17:26:45 +00:00
docs docs(tvix/eval): document abandoned thread-local vm 2022-11-08 08:41:04 +00:00
proptest-regressions/value test(tvix/eval): Add tests for the Eq laws of Value 2022-09-18 17:57:09 +00:00
src refactor(tvix/eval): add a LightSpan type for lighter span tracking 2022-12-21 22:21:25 +00:00
tests refactor(tvix/eval): use new public API in test code 2022-12-21 13:09:28 +00:00
.skip-subtree feat(tvix/tests): check in Nix' language test suite 2022-08-24 21:25:41 +00:00
build.rs feat(tvix/eval): implement builtins.currentSystem 2022-10-24 12:20:01 +00:00
Cargo.toml fix(tvix/eval): use test-generator fork that supports workspaces 2022-12-21 13:23:38 +00:00
default.nix refactor(tvix): build Rust projects using crate2nix 2022-12-15 17:26:45 +00:00
README.md docs(tvix/eval): explain where to find the site-specific mg tool 2022-10-13 18:41:02 +00:00

Tvix Evaluator

This project implements an interpreter for the Nix programming language. You can experiment with an online version of the evaluator: tvixbolt.

The interpreter aims to be compatible with nixpkgs, on the foundation of Nix 2.3.

Important note: The evaluator is not yet feature-complete, and while the core mechanisms (compiler, runtime, ...) have stabilised somewhat, a lot of components are still changing rapidly.

Please contact TVL with any questions you might have.

Building the evaluator

If you are in a full checkout of the TVL depot, you can simply run mg build in this directory (or mg build //tvix/eval from anywhere in the repo). The mg command is found in /tools/magrathea.

Important note: We only use and test Nix builds of our software against Nix 2.3. There are a variety of bugs and subtle problems in newer Nix versions which we do not have the bandwidth to address, builds in newer Nix versions may or may not work.

The evaluator can also be built with standard Rust tooling (i.e. cargo build).

If you would like to clone only the evaluator and build it directly with Rust tooling, you can do:

git clone https://code.tvl.fyi/depot.git:/tvix/eval.git tvix-eval

cd tvix-eval && cargo build

Nix test suite

C++ Nix implements a language test suite in the form of Nix source code files, and their expected output. The coverage of this test suite is not complete, but we intend to be compatible with it.

We have ported the test suite to Tvix, but do not run it by default as we are not yet compatible with it.

You can run the test suite by enabling the nix_tests feature in Cargo:

cargo test --features nix_tests

rnix-parser

Tvix is written in memory of jD91mZM2, the author of rnix-parser who sadly passed away.

Tvix makes heavy use of rnix-parser in its bytecode compiler. The parser is now maintained by Nix community members.