nix-prefetch-url fails to put package in store with some URLs

[Fuuzetsu]

nix-prefetch-url https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0Bzghs6gQWi60WTYtaXk3c1IzNVU

downloads the file and then exits with

invalid character `&' in name `uc?export=download&id=0Bzghs6gQWi60WTYtaXk3c1IzNVU' at /run/current-system/sw/bin/nix-prefetch-url line 122.

This particular example is cantata-1.3.4 which uses Google Drive as Google code stopped offering downloads.

Perhaps we should be able to specify what the name a download is stored under. For example, the Gentoo ebuild does this.

[Fuuzetsu]

I also note that this causes problems for fetchurl.

[vcunat]

For fetchurl it's folklore to fix it by setting suitable name = "foo";. I know of no (direct) way for nix-prefetch-url yet, and adding --name could be a nice solution.

[Fuuzetsu]

No matter what name is, if there is & in the url value, I can't build the package. My temporary workaround involved using tinyurl.com to generate a URL without & in it.

[vcunat]

For a workaround you can download the file by another way and then nix-prefetch-url file://...

[abbradar]

Got bitten with this -- there are indeed workarounds but it would be nice to fix this in nix-prefetch-url.

[strout]

Is this fixed? The following works fine:

nix-prefetch-url 'https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0Bzghs6gQWi60WTYtaXk3c1IzNVU' --name foo

As does passing name = "foo" to fetchurl.

[armijnhemel]

Is this from the command line, or from within a script? If it is from the commandline, then it is likely that the shell is the problem, as & has special meaning there (to make something a background process). If it is from the commandline, then this is not a bug, but expected behaviour.

[edolstra]

Closing as by design. You can use --name to set a valid name if needed.