From 19f89eb6842747570f262c003d977f02cb155968 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eelco Dolstra <edolstra@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 19:48:20 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Avoid isValidPath(), use queryPathInfo() instead

Since recently we call isValidPath() a lot from the evaluator,
specifically from
LocalStoreAccessor::requireStoreObject(). Unfortunately, isValidPath()
uses but does not populate the in-memory path info cache; only
queryPathInfo() does that. So isValidPath() is fast *if* we happened
to call queryPathInfo() on the same path previously. This is not the
case when lazy-trees is enabled, so we got a lot of superfluous,
high-latency calls to the daemon (which show up in verbose output as
`performing daemon worker op: 1`).

Similarly, `fetchToStore()` called `isValidPath()` as well.

The fix is to use `queryPathInfo()`, which for one particular eval
reduced the number of daemon calls from 15246 to 2324. This may cause
Nix to fetch some unnecessary information from the daemon, but that
probably doesn't matter much given the high latency.
---
 src/libfetchers/fetch-to-store.cc           |  2 +-
 src/libstore/include/nix/store/store-api.hh | 13 +++++++++++--
 src/libstore/local-fs-store.cc              |  2 +-
 src/libstore/store-api.cc                   | 19 +++++++++++++++++++
 4 files changed, 32 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/libfetchers/fetch-to-store.cc b/src/libfetchers/fetch-to-store.cc
index d3e416c7f..ae1cc04e6 100644
--- a/src/libfetchers/fetch-to-store.cc
+++ b/src/libfetchers/fetch-to-store.cc
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ std::pair<StorePath, Hash> fetchToStore2(
             auto hash = Hash::parseSRI(fetchers::getStrAttr(*res, "hash"));
             auto storePath = store.makeFixedOutputPathFromCA(name,
                 ContentAddressWithReferences::fromParts(method, hash, {}));
-            if (mode == FetchMode::DryRun || store.isValidPath(storePath)) {
+            if (mode == FetchMode::DryRun || store.maybeQueryPathInfo(storePath)) {
                 debug("source path '%s' cache hit in '%s' (hash '%s')", path, store.printStorePath(storePath), hash.to_string(HashFormat::SRI, true));
                 return {storePath, hash};
             }
diff --git a/src/libstore/include/nix/store/store-api.hh b/src/libstore/include/nix/store/store-api.hh
index e0a3e67d1..09b0d15b4 100644
--- a/src/libstore/include/nix/store/store-api.hh
+++ b/src/libstore/include/nix/store/store-api.hh
@@ -269,7 +269,9 @@ public:
     StorePath followLinksToStorePath(std::string_view path) const;
 
     /**
-     * Check whether a path is valid.
+     * Check whether a path is valid. NOTE: this function does not
+     * generally cache whether a path is valid. You may want to use
+     * `maybeQueryPathInfo()`, which does cache.
      */
     bool isValidPath(const StorePath & path);
 
@@ -308,10 +310,17 @@ public:
 
     /**
      * Query information about a valid path. It is permitted to omit
-     * the name part of the store path.
+     * the name part of the store path. Throws an exception if the
+     * path is not valid.
      */
     ref<const ValidPathInfo> queryPathInfo(const StorePath & path);
 
+    /**
+     * Like `queryPathInfo()`, but returns `nullptr` if the path is
+     * not valid.
+     */
+    std::shared_ptr<const ValidPathInfo> maybeQueryPathInfo(const StorePath & path);
+
     /**
      * Asynchronous version of queryPathInfo().
      */
diff --git a/src/libstore/local-fs-store.cc b/src/libstore/local-fs-store.cc
index add3b04d2..620819234 100644
--- a/src/libstore/local-fs-store.cc
+++ b/src/libstore/local-fs-store.cc
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ struct LocalStoreAccessor : PosixSourceAccessor
     void requireStoreObject(const CanonPath & path)
     {
         auto [storePath, rest] = store->toStorePath(store->storeDir + path.abs());
-        if (requireValidPath && !store->isValidPath(storePath))
+        if (requireValidPath && !store->maybeQueryPathInfo(storePath))
             throw InvalidPath("path '%1%' is not a valid store path", store->printStorePath(storePath));
     }
 
diff --git a/src/libstore/store-api.cc b/src/libstore/store-api.cc
index 39de6808d..70f463059 100644
--- a/src/libstore/store-api.cc
+++ b/src/libstore/store-api.cc
@@ -633,6 +633,25 @@ ref<const ValidPathInfo> Store::queryPathInfo(const StorePath & storePath)
 }
 
 
+std::shared_ptr<const ValidPathInfo> Store::maybeQueryPathInfo(const StorePath & storePath)
+{
+    std::promise<std::shared_ptr<const ValidPathInfo>> promise;
+
+    queryPathInfo(storePath,
+        {[&](std::future<ref<const ValidPathInfo>> result) {
+            try {
+                promise.set_value(result.get());
+            } catch (InvalidPath &) {
+                promise.set_value(nullptr);
+            } catch (...) {
+                promise.set_exception(std::current_exception());
+            }
+        }});
+
+    return promise.get_future().get();
+}
+
+
 static bool goodStorePath(const StorePath & expected, const StorePath & actual)
 {
     return