Error while building Plutus Core with Nix - "cannot coerce null to a string"

[hexrcs]

Area

• Plutus Foundation Related to the GHC plugin, Haskell-to-Plutus compiler, on-chain code
• Plutus Application Framework Related to the Plutus application backend (PAB), emulator, Plutus libraries
• Marlowe Related to Marlowe
• Other Any other topic (Playgrounds, etc.)

Summary

I'm trying to build Plutus on an M1 mac, but encountered the following error.

error: cannot coerce null to a string, at /nix/store/sdjxjsd5phr225rs2qzklj2xci0c9gr0-source/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:192:19

This is my first time using Nix. It seems that there's a bug in the make-derivation.nix. That line specifically is name = "${attrs.pname}-${attrs.version}";. Maybe attrs was null?

Steps to reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install nix with this command sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --darwin-use-unencrypted-nix-store-volume
2. Make a new file at /etc/nix/nix.conf, and add the following to use the cache to save time

substituters        = https://hydra.iohk.io https://iohk.cachix.org https://cache.nixos.org/
trusted-public-keys = hydra.iohk.io:f/Ea+s+dFdN+3Y/G+FDgSq+a5NEWhJGzdjvKNGv0/EQ= iohk.cachix.org-1:DpRUyj7h7V830dp/i6Nti+NEO2/nhblbov/8MW7Rqoo= cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=

sandbox = true
extra-sandbox-paths = /System/Library/Frameworks /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks /usr/lib /private/tmp /private/var/tmp /usr/bin/env

3. Restart the computer
4. Clone the Plutus repo git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/plutus.git
5. Navigate into the root of ./plutus
6. Run nix build -f default.nix plutus.haskell.packages.plutus-core.components.library

Expected behavior

Build should go through successfully.

System info (please complete the following information):

• OS: MacOS (M1 Apple Silicon)
• OS Version: Big Sur 11.5.1
• nix --version: nix (Nix) 2.3.15
• Plutus version or commit hash: a2ce648

Screenshots and attachments

Running the nix build command again with --show-trace:

The line where the error got thrown:

Additional context

When running the nix build command on Plutus for the first time, Nix downloaded 20.7MiB of data.

[ak3n]

Thanks for the issue!

Unfortunately, the nix support for m1 macs is new at the moment and is available only in newer nixpkgs. Plutus uses the older and more stable version.

I don't think it will be fixed in the near future. Such things take time to update and upgrade. Even if you will make it work somehow, you will lack a lot of cached packages (because of different nixpkgs versions).

[hexrcs]

Thanks for the issue!

Unfortunately, the nix support for m1 macs is new at the moment and is available only in newer nixpkgs. Plutus uses the older and more stable version.

I don't think it will be fixed in the near future. Such things take time to update and upgrade. Even if you will make it work somehow, you will lack a lot of cached packages (because of different nixpkgs versions).

I see, thank you for the reply! I will leave this issue open in case someone has a comprehensive solution in the future.

[ak3n]

You may try to disable the sandbox: sandbox = false or other notes from https://docs.plutus-community.com/docs/setup/MacOS.html

[hexrcs]

@ak3n Thanks, I'll try again, but I remember I used unstable + didn't disable sandbox, which was also not working, so I enabled it. Hope it works.

[michaelpj]

Closing as stale.