So far the architecture for the tests was that we would use a systemd
socket unit using the Accept option to start a small shell process where
we can pipe commands into by connecting to the socket created by the
socket unit.
This is unnecessary since we can directly use the code snippets from the
individual subtests and systemd will take care of checking the return
code in case we get any assertions[^1].
Another advantage of this is that tests now run in parallel, so we can
do rather expensive things such as looking in /nix to see whether
anything is writable.
The new assert_permissions() function is the main driver behind this and
allows for a more fine-grained way to check whether we got the right
permissions whilst also ignoring irrelevant things such as read-only
empty directories.
Our previous approach also just did a read-only check, which might be
fine in full-apivfs mode where the attack surface already is large, but
in chroot-only mode we really want to make sure nothing is every
writable.
A downside of the new approach is that currently the unit names are
numbered via lib.imap1, which makes it annoying to track its definition.
[^1]: Speaking of assertions, I wrapped the code to be run with pytest's
assertion rewriting, so that we get more useful AssertionErrors.
Signed-off-by: aszlig <aszlig@nix.build>
Nixpkgs is a collection of over 100,000 software packages that can be installed with the Nix package manager. It also implements NixOS, a purely-functional Linux distribution.
Manuals
- NixOS Manual - how to install, configure, and maintain a purely-functional Linux distribution
- Nixpkgs Manual - contributing to Nixpkgs and using programming-language-specific Nix expressions
- Nix Package Manager Manual - how to write Nix expressions (programs), and how to use Nix command line tools
Community
- Discourse Forum
- Matrix Chat
- NixOS Weekly
- Official wiki
- Community-maintained list of ways to get in touch (Discord, Telegram, IRC, etc.)
Other Project Repositories
The sources of all official Nix-related projects are in the NixOS organization on GitHub. Here are some of the main ones:
- Nix - the purely functional package manager
- NixOps - the tool to remotely deploy NixOS machines
- nixos-hardware - NixOS profiles to optimize settings for different hardware
- Nix RFCs - the formal process for making substantial changes to the community
- NixOS homepage - the NixOS.org website
- hydra - our continuous integration system
- NixOS Artwork - NixOS artwork
Continuous Integration and Distribution
Nixpkgs and NixOS are built and tested by our continuous integration system, Hydra.
- Continuous package builds for unstable/master
- Continuous package builds for the NixOS 23.11 release
- Tests for unstable/master
- Tests for the NixOS 23.11 release
Artifacts successfully built with Hydra are published to cache at https://cache.nixos.org/. When successful build and test criteria are met, the Nixpkgs expressions are distributed via Nix channels.
Contributing
Nixpkgs is among the most active projects on GitHub. While thousands of open issues and pull requests might seem a lot at first, it helps consider it in the context of the scope of the project. Nixpkgs describes how to build tens of thousands of pieces of software and implements a Linux distribution. The GitHub Insights page gives a sense of the project activity.
Community contributions are always welcome through GitHub Issues and Pull Requests.
For more information about contributing to the project, please visit the contributing page.
Donations
The infrastructure for NixOS and related projects is maintained by a nonprofit organization, the NixOS Foundation. To ensure the continuity and expansion of the NixOS infrastructure, we are looking for donations to our organization.
You can donate to the NixOS foundation through SEPA bank transfers or by using Open Collective:
License
Nixpkgs is licensed under the MIT License.
Note: MIT license does not apply to the packages built by Nixpkgs, merely to the files in this repository (the Nix expressions, build scripts, NixOS modules, etc.). It also might not apply to patches included in Nixpkgs, which may be derivative works of the packages to which they apply. The aforementioned artifacts are all covered by the licenses of the respective packages.