tvl-depot/tvix/eval
sterni fcd5e53703 fix(tvix/eval/builtins): force acc not list element in foldl'
When investigating discrepancies between foldl' in tvix and C++ Nix,
I discovered that C++ Nix's foldl' doesn't seem to be strict at all.
Since this seemed wrong, I looked into Haskell's foldl' implementation
which doesn't force the list elements (`val` in our code), but the
accumulation value (`res` in our code). You can look at the code here:
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.17.0.0/docs/src/GHC.List.html#foldl%27

This actually makes a lot of sense: If `res` is not forced after each
application of `op`, we'll end up thunks nested as deeply as the list is
long, potentially taking up a lot of space. This can be limited by
forcing the `res` thunk before applying `op` again (and creating a new
thunk).

I've also PR-ed an equivalent change for C++ Nix at
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/7158. Since this is not merged nor
backported to our Nix 2.3 fork, I've not copied the eval fail test yet,
since it wouldn't when checking our tests against C++ Nix in depot.

Change-Id: I34edf6fc3031fc1485c3e714f2280b4fba8f004b
Reviewed-on: https://cl.tvl.fyi/c/depot/+/6947
Autosubmit: sterni <sternenseemann@systemli.org>
Reviewed-by: grfn <grfn@gws.fyi>
Tested-by: BuildkiteCI
2022-10-11 15:53:29 +00:00
..
benches refactor(tvix/eval): use Clap for arg+env parsing 2022-09-18 22:08:43 +00:00
docs fix(tvix/eval/builtins): force acc not list element in foldl' 2022-10-11 15:53:29 +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 fix(tvix/eval/builtins): force acc not list element in foldl' 2022-10-11 15:53:29 +00:00
tests feat(tvix/eval): Allow adding strings to paths 2022-10-10 20:23:41 +00:00
.envrc chore(tvix/eval): add simple .envrc / shell.nix 2022-09-17 17:31:08 +00:00
.gitignore feat(tvix/eval): check in generated project skeleton 2022-08-12 12:34:29 +00:00
.skip-subtree feat(tvix/tests): check in Nix' language test suite 2022-08-24 21:25:41 +00:00
Cargo.lock fix(tvix/eval): support string identifiers in inherits 2022-09-22 23:07:14 +00:00
Cargo.toml fix(tvix/eval): support string identifiers in inherits 2022-09-22 23:07:14 +00:00
default.nix feat(tvix/eval): Add passthru build for benchmark binaries 2022-10-02 22:43:34 +00:00
README.md docs(tvix/eval): remove the note on the private repo 2022-09-11 19:58:44 +00:00
shell.nix chore(tvix/eval): add rustfmt to the shell 2022-09-18 23:19:54 +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).

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.