[RFC 0045] Deprecating unquoted URL syntax #45

7c6f434c · 2019-04-28T11:36:09Z

No description provided.

grahamc

I'm in favor of this RFC.

grahamc · 2019-04-28T11:54:24Z

rfcs/0045-deprecate-url-syntax.md

+strings or uniformly unquoted.
+
+Decide to use unquoted URLs for all URLs without special characters or variable
+expansion.


Mind making these two items a list?

Definitely done in the PR branch, I have no idea why GitHub doesn't show this yet…

grahamc · 2019-04-28T11:54:46Z

rfcs/0045-deprecate-url-syntax.md

+convert URLs to quoted strings when changing them.
+
+Accept PRs that convert unquoted URLs to quoted strings if such PRs are
+submitted.


I wonder if there is a way ofborg could detect newly introduced URL values?

Maybe your profiling patch to Nix is in the right direction for that…

joepie91 · 2019-04-28T13:07:45Z

Strongly in favour. It's never been clear to me why this was part of the syntax, and more than once I've been left with analysis paralysis because I wasn't sure whether there was a reason to use the special syntax or not, and there appeared to be no documentation on that.

And from a tooling implementor POV: removing this in the long run would reduce the complexity of a Nix (parser) implementation.

peti

Yes, please remove the special URL syntax! That feature adds very little value (if any) and I've never needed it.

samueldr · 2019-04-28T17:03:15Z

Quick thoughts about deprecating language/interpreter features:

As far as detection goes, deprecating features in the interpreter could be made strict with a list of "new" features, e.g. --option strict-eval no-unquoted-urls so that the interpreter gates everything related to the unquoted URLs under conditionals, making it fail. Tracing could additionally be added at the same locations to warn, hopefully with a flag to disable tracing those.

Though, this is all at the cost of adding more conditionals, thus more possibilities for weird behaviours.

Gating it in the main interpreter with an option would also allow end-users to set it globally, allowing new deprecation-free evals to be forced on their systems, hopefully helping weed out the leftover features deprecations.

globin

I agree!

Another thing with unquoted URLs is that most terminals treat the ; as part of the url making it harder to copy/click links with the special syntax.

7c6f434c · 2019-04-28T21:22:00Z

Thanks for the suggestion of one more reason, let's have motivation section be the longest one!

zimbatm

👍 happy to see this happening

zimbatm · 2019-04-29T13:48:06Z

rfcs/0045-deprecate-url-syntax.md

+
+Add a note in the Nixpkgs manual that the unquoted URL syntax is deprecated,
+changes to Nixpkgs should not increase its use, and it is recommended to
+convert URLs to quoted strings when changing them.


Is it possible to be more specific? How would everybody be notified about this new rule?

I think the mere fact of an RFC passing is a noticeable effect event for a large fraction of active contributors. (It is visible in this repository, announced via Discourse, gets into the «weekly», is likely to be discussed a bit on IRC etc.)

For this specific RFC just the announcement «RFC on Deprecation of URL syntax passed» conveys enough information.

It will be noted in two out of three manuals.

Once we have an RFC that something «should not» happen, a request for cosmetic cleanup in a PR (and such requests happen) is more likely to contain a mention of quoting URLs (if relevant for the package in question). This also spreads the knowledge.

I do have an impression that quite a few people mentioned that they are disappointed they cannot refer to a policy that quoted URLs are better, so I expect the review channel of information dissemination to perform well.

Appendix A: future work — maybe the tool gets implemented, then we can open a countdown issue and maybe make ofborg check that PRs do not make things worse).

My plan is indeed just these points. I think that these things do not really need any additions to the text of RFC, and I think these mechanisms will be enough to distribute the information.

If you think that any of these four channels benefit from an addition to RFC text, or that there are other information distribution channels that should be used (and mentioned in the RFC text) please give some details.

It doesn't have to be formalized in the RFC but it's good to have an accompanying discussion.

For example you mentioned "they are disappointed they cannot refer to a policy". Would the RFC act as such policy? If not, maybe we should have a list of official policies in place.

I think having a deprecation notice in the manual (added in accordance with an explicit bullet point in an approved/accepted RFC) is close enough to official policy for the purpose of asking people not to do the deprecated things.

I didn't start the discussion myself, because I thought that (1) is assumed, (2) and (A) are explicitly mentioned, and (3) is a manual variant of (A) in a sense.

rfcs/0045-deprecate-url-syntax.md

FRidh · 2019-05-01T05:38:02Z

rfcs/0045-deprecate-url-syntax.md

+start-date: 2019-04-28
+author: Michael Raskin
+co-authors: 
+related-issues: 


NixOS/nixpkgs#27809
NixOS/nixpkgs#46378

I am not sure: the RFC template seems to imply this is for PRs implementing the RFC, not for the changes the RFC intends to undo.

Co-Authored-By: 7c6f434c <7c6f434c@mail.ru>

7c6f434c · 2019-05-01T06:56:53Z

@FRidh thanks for the proofreading.

edolstra · 2019-05-01T08:12:49Z

We should not break backwards compatibility in such a massive way. I mean, deprecation is only useful if you eventually want to remove it, at which point it becomes impossible for Nix to build old Nix expressions.

In principle, the flakes "epoch" feature would make it possible to make such language changes in a backward compatible way (e.g. unquoted URLs could be deprecated in epoch 2020). I'm not convinced it's actually useful, though. The case of x:x falls under the "just don't do that" header IMHO.

7c6f434c · 2019-05-01T08:32:49Z

There are some features that we have chosen not to use in Nixpkgs anymore and we do not recommend to use these features if they can be avoided at all. Additional tooling intended for aiding Nixpkgs development can be useful without supporting such features, and easier creation of tooling is good.

The RFC definitely does not argue for actually dropping the support unless some other breaking changes happen. It will be a pity if an epoch-guarded syntax change for something major like a change in overrides happens without a cleanup of minor annnoyances.

domenkozar · 2019-05-02T11:58:01Z

In 2022 we can parse Nix identifier without first parsing a URI with a regex, which will speed up the parser.

edolstra · 2019-05-02T12:04:00Z

@domenkozar I think URIs, identifiers etc. are all recognized using a single finite state machine, so it shouldn't matter much for performance.

References: - https://nix.dev/anti-patterns/language#unquoted-urls - NixOS/rfcs#45 - https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/rfcs/0045-deprecate-url-syntax.md

nixos-discourse · 2021-11-01T21:11:24Z

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nix-2-4-released/15822/1

Basically an attempt to resume fixing NixOS#5543 for a breakage introduced earlier[1]. Basically, when evaluating an older `nixpkgs` with `nix-shell` the following error occurs: λ ma27 [~] → nix-shell -I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-18.03 -p nix error: anonymous function at /nix/store/zakqwc529rb6xcj8pwixjsxscvlx9fbi-source/pkgs/top-level/default.nix:20:1 called with unexpected argument 'inNixShell' at /nix/store/zakqwc529rb6xcj8pwixjsxscvlx9fbi-source/pkgs/top-level/impure.nix:82:1: 81| 82| import ./. (builtins.removeAttrs args [ "system" "platform" ] // { | ^ 83| inherit config overlays crossSystem; This is a problem because one of the main selling points of Nix is that you can evaluate any old Nix expression and still get the same result (which also means that it *still evaluates*). In fact we're deprecating, but not removing a lot of stuff for that reason such as unquoted URLs[2] or `builtins.toPath`. However this property was essentially thrown away here. The change is rather simple: check if `inNixShell` is specified in the formals of an auto-called function. This means that { inNixShell ? false }: builtins.trace inNixShell (with import <nixpkgs> { }; makeShell { name = "foo"; }) will show `trace: true` while args@{ ... }: builtins.trace args.inNixShell (with import <nixpkgs> { }; makeShell { name = "foo"; }) will throw the following error: error: attribute 'inNixShell' missing This is explicitly needed because the function in `pkgs/top-level/impure.nix` of e.g. NixOS 18.03 has an ellipsis[3], but passes the attribute-set on to another lambda with formals that doesn't have an ellipsis anymore (hence the error from above). This was perhaps a mistake, but we can't fix it anymore. This also means that there's AFAICS no proper way to check if the attr-set that's passed to the Nix code via `EvalState::autoCallFunction` is eventually passed to a lambda with formals where `inNixShell` is missing. However, this fix comes with a certain price. Essentially every `shell.nix` that assumes `inNixShell` to be passed to the formals even without explicitly specifying it would break with this[4]. However I think that this is ugly, but preferable: * Nix 2.3 was declared stable by NixOS up until recently (well, it still is as long as 21.11 is alive), so most people might not have even noticed that feature. * We're talking about a way shorter time-span with this change being in the wild, so the fallout should be smaller IMHO. [1] NixOS@9d612c3 [2] NixOS/rfcs#45 (comment) [3] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/release-18.03/pkgs/top-level/impure.nix#L75 [4] See e.g. the second expression in this commit-message or the changes for `tests/ca/nix-shell.sh`.

Unquoted URLs are deprecated NixOS/rfcs#45

otherwise, eval fails when the experimental no-url-literals feature is activated unquoted urls are discouraged after NixOS/rfcs#45

@globin

* A small RFC on deprecating URL syntax * Convert alternatives to a list * Add a mention of tooling in future work * A remark from @globin about one more problem with unquoted URLs * Grammar edit: comparison of URLs, paths and strings. Co-Authored-By: 7c6f434c <7c6f434c@mail.ru> * Style edit: possibility of future removal Co-Authored-By: 7c6f434c <7c6f434c@mail.ru> * 0045: commit to using the tooling that now exists * Update rfcs/0045-deprecate-url-syntax.md Shepherd team Co-Authored-By: Domen Kožar <domen@enlambda.com> * Fix shepherd list * Update based on a discussion * Explicitly make future removal conditional on editions; restrict the claim about no special support to the Nix language itself

It has been agreed upon by RFC process that this syntax is not to be used: NixOS/rfcs#45

A small RFC on deprecating URL syntax

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grahamc reviewed Apr 28, 2019

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Convert alternatives to a list

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Add a mention of tooling in future work

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globin approved these changes Apr 28, 2019

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globin changed the title ~~A small RFC on deprecating URL syntax~~ [RFC 0045] A small RFC on deprecating URL syntax Apr 28, 2019

globin changed the title ~~[RFC 0045] A small RFC on deprecating URL syntax~~ [RFC 0045] Deprecating unquoted URL syntax Apr 28, 2019

A remark from @globin about one more problem with unquoted URLs

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Lassulus mentioned this pull request Apr 30, 2019

ssh-audit: init at 1.7.0 NixOS/nixpkgs#60519

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FRidh and others added 2 commits May 1, 2019 06:50

Grammar edit: comparison of URLs, paths and strings.

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Co-Authored-By: 7c6f434c <7c6f434c@mail.ru>

Style edit: possibility of future removal

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Co-Authored-By: 7c6f434c <7c6f434c@mail.ru>

edolstra added the status: new label May 2, 2019

Mic92 added the status: open for nominations Open for shepherding team nominations label May 2, 2019

r-ryantm mentioned this pull request Aug 14, 2021

tmux-mem-cpu-load: 3.4.0 -> 3.5.1 NixOS/nixpkgs#134025

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python38Packages.lazy_import: quote homepage NixOS/nixpkgs#140031

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python38Packages.tensorboard-plugin-wit: quote homepage NixOS/nixpkgs#140034

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nix-shell: restore backwards-compat with old nixpkgs NixOS/nix#6664

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Add an installer test NixOS/nix#7043

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fix: scala-cli overlay DevInsideYou/scala-seed#2

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Inspections NixOS/nix-idea#26

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ursi added a commit to ursi/smos that referenced this pull request Feb 12, 2023

Put quotes around the cache URL

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Unquoted URLs are deprecated NixOS/rfcs#45

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Put quotes around the cache URL ursi/smos#1

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Put quotes around the cache URL NorfairKing/smos#252

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Put quotes around the cache URL (#252)

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Unquoted URLs are deprecated NixOS/rfcs#45

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build-support/vm/deb/deb-closure: quote generated urls

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otherwise, eval fails when the experimental no-url-literals feature is activated unquoted urls are discouraged after NixOS/rfcs#45

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build-support/vm/deb/deb-closure: quote generated urls NixOS/nixpkgs#217256

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ConnorBaker mentioned this pull request Mar 27, 2023

fix: update nix files to use strings instead of URL literals leanprover/lean4#2172

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nix flake check with no-url-literals fails ngi-nix/ngipkgs#39

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Remove URL literals cucumber-sp/yandex-music-linux#69

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Format using nixfmt-rfc-style nix-ocaml/nix-overlays#1526

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default.nix: don't use unquoted urls aws/uefi#18

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remove use of unquoted URL literals

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It has been agreed upon by RFC process that this syntax is not to be used: NixOS/rfcs#45

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remove use of unquoted URL literals input-output-hk/haskell.nix#2248

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remove use of unquoted URL literals (#2248)

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It has been agreed upon by RFC process that this syntax is not to be used: NixOS/rfcs#45

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[RFC 0045] Deprecating unquoted URL syntax #45

[RFC 0045] Deprecating unquoted URL syntax #45

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[RFC 0045] Deprecating unquoted URL syntax #45

[RFC 0045] Deprecating unquoted URL syntax #45

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