Building

Normalizing derivation inputs

  • Each input must be realised prior to building the derivation in question.
  • Once this is done, the derivation is normalized, replacing each input deriving path with its store path, which we now know from realising the input.

Builder Execution

The builder is executed as follows:

  • A temporary directory is created under the directory specified by TMPDIR (default /tmp) where the build will take place. The current directory is changed to this directory.

  • The environment is cleared and set to the derivation attributes, as specified above.

  • In addition, the following variables are set:

    • NIX_BUILD_TOP contains the path of the temporary directory for this build.

    • Also, TMPDIR, TEMPDIR, TMP, TEMP are set to point to the temporary directory. This is to prevent the builder from accidentally writing temporary files anywhere else. Doing so might cause interference by other processes.

    • PATH is set to /path-not-set to prevent shells from initialising it to their built-in default value.

    • HOME is set to /homeless-shelter to prevent programs from using /etc/passwd or the like to find the user's home directory, which could cause impurity. Usually, when HOME is set, it is used as the location of the home directory, even if it points to a non-existent path.

    • NIX_STORE is set to the path of the top-level Nix store directory (typically, /nix/store).

    • NIX_ATTRS_JSON_FILE & NIX_ATTRS_SH_FILE if __structuredAttrs is set to true for the derivation. A detailed explanation of this behavior can be found in the section about structured attrs.

    • For each output declared in outputs, the corresponding environment variable is set to point to the intended path in the Nix store for that output. Each output path is a concatenation of the cryptographic hash of all build inputs, the name attribute and the output name. (The output name is omitted if it’s out.)

  • If an output path already exists, it is removed. Also, locks are acquired to prevent multiple Nix instances from performing the same build at the same time.

  • A log of the combined standard output and error is written to /nix/var/log/nix.

  • The builder is executed with the arguments specified by the attribute args. If it exits with exit code 0, it is considered to have succeeded.

  • The temporary directory is removed (unless the -K option was specified).

Processing outputs

If the builder exited successfully, the following steps happen in order to turn the output directories left behind by the builder into proper store objects:

  • Normalize the file permissions

    Nix sets the last-modified timestamp on all files in the build result to 1 (00:00:01 1/1/1970 UTC), sets the group to the default group, and sets the mode of the file to 0444 or 0555 (i.e., read-only, with execute permission enabled if the file was originally executable). Any possible setuid and setgid bits are cleared.

    Note

    Setuid and setgid programs are not currently supported by Nix. This is because the Nix archives used in deployment have no concept of ownership information, and because it makes the build result dependent on the user performing the build.

  • Calculate the references

    Nix scans each output path for references to input paths by looking for the hash parts of the input paths. Since these are potential runtime dependencies, Nix registers them as dependencies of the output paths.

    Nix also scans for references to other outputs' paths in the same way, because outputs are allowed to refer to each other. If the outputs' references to each other form a cycle, this is an error, because the references of store objects much be acyclic.