Since `nix flake check` doesn't produce a `result` symlink, it doesn't
actually need to build/substitute derivations that are already known
to have succeeded, i.e. that are substitutable.
This can speed up CI jobs in cases where the derivations have already
been built by other jobs. For instance, a command like
nix flake check github:NixOS/hydra/aa62c7f7db31753f0cde690f8654dd1907fc0ce2
should no longer build anything because the outputs are already in
cache.nixos.org.
The use of R"(...)" added a bunch of unnecessary whitespace, e.g.
error:
Unable to start any build;
either increase '--max-jobs' or enable remote builds.
For more information run 'man nix.conf' and search for '/machines'.
Now we get
error: Unable to start any build; either increase '--max-jobs' or enable remote builds.
For more information run 'man nix.conf' and search for '/machines'.
This shaves off a very significand amount of memory used
for evaluation as well as reduces the GC-managed heap.
Previously the union discriminator (InternalType) was
stored as a separate field in the Value, which takes up
whole 8 bytes due to padding needed for member alignment.
This effectively wasted 7 whole bytes of memory. Instead
of doing that InternalType is instead packed into pointer
alignment niches. As it turns out, there's more than enough
unused bits there for the bit packing to be effective.
See the doxygen comment in the ValueStorage specialization
for more details.
This does not add any performance overhead, even though
we now consistently assert the InternalType in all getters.
This can also be made atomic with a double width compare-and-swap
instruction on x86_64 (CMPXCHG16B instruction) for parallel evaluation.
This factors out most of the value representation into a mixin class.
`finishValue` is now gone for good and replaced with a simple template
function `setStorage` which derives the type information/disriminator from
the type of the argument. Likewise, reading of the value goes through function
template `getStorage`.
An empty type `Null` is introduced to make the bijection InternalType <-> C++ type
complete.
Previous use of symlink_status() always translated into a stat call, leading
to huge performance penalties for by-name-overlay in nixpkgs. The comment
below references the possible caching, but that seemed to be erroneous, since
the correct way to make use of the caching API is by calling a bunch of `is_*`
functions [1]. For example, here's how libstdc++ does that [2], [3].
This translates to great nixpkgs eval performance improvements:
```
Benchmark 1: GC_INITIAL_HEAP_SIZE=4G result/bin/nix-instantiate ../nixpkgs -A hello --readonly-mode
Time (mean ± σ): 186.7 ms ± 6.7 ms [User: 121.3 ms, System: 64.9 ms]
Range (min … max): 179.4 ms … 201.6 ms 16 runs
Benchmark 2: GC_INITIAL_HEAP_SIZE=4G nix-instantiate ../nixpkgs -A hello --readonly-mode
Time (mean ± σ): 230.6 ms ± 5.0 ms [User: 126.9 ms, System: 103.1 ms]
Range (min … max): 225.1 ms … 241.4 ms 13 runs
```
[1]: https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2016/p0317r1.html
[2]: 8ea555b7b4/libstdc%2B%2B-v3/include/bits/fs_dir.h (L341-L348)
[3]: 8ea555b7b4/libstdc%2B%2B-v3/include/bits/fs_dir.h (L161-L163)
These wrappers don't seem to be used anywhere in and out of tree.
Also the declaration in the header has an incorrect function name `maybeParseFlake`.
Closes#11948
Examples:
error: Cannot delete path '/nix/store/6fcrjgfjip2ww3sx51rrmmghfsf60jvi-patchelf-0.14.3' because it's referenced by the GC root '/home/eelco/Dev/nix-master/build/result'.
error: Cannot delete path '/nix/store/rn0qyn3kmky26xgpr2n10vr787g57lff-cowsay-3.8.4' because it's referenced by the GC root '/proc/3600568/environ'.
