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Using Nix with Cardano SL

We use Nix for building and deploying Cardano SL. It provides fully deterministic and cached builds of our software and all dependencies, and permits fully declarative configuration of the infrastructure running the Cardano SL network.

Installing

The Nix package manager can be installed on any Linux distribution (with SELinux disabled) or on macOS.

Multi user mode is the best and most commonly tested configuration. To install Nix in multi user mode:

sh <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

Full instructions are in the Nix Manual.

Binary cache

Configuring the IOHK binary cache is essential for developing with Cardano SL. If you do not have the binary cache set up correctly, Nix will download source tarballs and proceed to build an entire system from scratch.

Add the following lines to /etc/nix/nix.conf. If the file does not exist, then create it.

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

The nix-daemon must be restarted after editing /etc/nix/nix.conf for changes to take effect. Run systemctl restart nix-daemon on Linux or sudo launchctl stop org.nixos.nix-daemon; sudo launchctl start org.nixos.nix-daemon on macOS.

We do not recommend using ~/.config/nix/nix.conf unless you are a power user. It's simpler to have only one global config file.

If using NixOS, see iohk-binary-cache.nix.

Using command-line options

Rather than configuring the binary caches, they can be given as options to nix-build, like so:

$ nix-build \
  --option substituters "https://hydra.iohk.io https://cache.nixos.org" \
  --option trusted-substituters "" \
  --option trusted-public-keys "hydra.iohk.io:f/Ea+s+dFdN+3Y/G+FDgSq+a5NEWhJGzdjvKNGv0/EQ= cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=" \
  default.nix

The user must be a "trusted" nix user. This can be set in nix.conf. For NixOS systems, it can be set by the nix.trustedUsers option in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix.

Other configuration

You may wish to adjust the max-jobs and cores settings in nix.conf for your computer.

max-jobs = 2  # run at most two builds at once
cores = 0     # the builder will use all available CPU cores

See the Nix Manual for more information.

Background Info

These papers have a good explanation of the problems solved by Nix and are worth a read if you are interested.

FAQ

I'm not getting cached builds!

If you have the develop/release/master branch checked out, and no local changes, all builds should be downloaded from the IOHK binary cache and nothing built locally.

  1. Check that the IOHK binary cache is set up correctly.

    You can tell if the cache works by finding an output store path on a Hydra build, and then running nix-store --realize PATH. For example:

    nix-store --realize /nix/store/ivapcjym0ar5mdx3jyf1p6d3m2zzmajn-cardano-sl-1.3.0

    If this doesn't work, review your settings with:

    nix show-config | egrep '(subst|keys)'

  2. Check for extra files in package sub-directories. Run git clean -nd to see what to delete.

    Common things which defeat the cache are things like benchmark results or files left behind after running tests.

    Run git clean -ndX to see what else to delete.

Multi User Nix Installation

You can tell if Nix is installed in multi user mode by checking the ownership of /nix/store. The owner:group should be root:nixbld.

Additionally, the nix-daemon service will be running in a multi user Nix installation.

How to update the src.json files

We pin versions to exact revisions and put these revisions, and their SHA-256 hash into little json files. To recalculate the hash, use nix-prefetch-git according to this procedure.

Building release.nix

When building attributes from release.nix, don't forget to specify the arch like this:

nix-build release.nix -A cardano-wallet.x86_64-linux

If you don't specify the arch, it will build for both x86_64-darwin and x86_64-linux. Unless you have a macos build slave configured, this will fail with:

checking for references to /tmp/nix-build-cardano-sl-util-1.2.0.drv-0 in /nix/store/8ncrzv05fbkb95l1n2l0mkiv94i23qb0-cardano-sl-util-1.2.0...
error: a 'x86_64-darwin' is required to build '/nix/store/ncma07cbrlh344s28jrmk3r1n9c3rxxx-remove-references-to.drv', but I am a 'x86_64-linux'

stack2nix Hackage Snapshots

If a non-LTS package version is added to extra-deps in stack.yaml and then stack2nix fails with something like:

user error (No such package formatting-6.3.6 in the cabal database. Did you run cabal update?)

Then it probably means that the Hackage snapshot is too old. Update pkgs/generate.sh.

Upgrading to Nix 2

In Nix 2 there is a command nix upgrade-nix to upgrade. However, no such command exists before Nix 2.

The best way to upgrade from Nix 1.x is by uninstalling Nix and then re-installing.

Finding your nix version

If you have Nix 2 then the nix --version command will work. Otherwise, run nix-build --version.

To see what channels you have configured in your profile, run:

nix-channel --list

Uninstalling nix on macOS

Run these commands in a terminal as the root user (sudo -i).

Remove the nix store and config files:

rm -rf /nix
rm -rf /var/root/.nix-*
rm -rf /var/root/.cache/nix
rm -rf /etc/nix

If the /etc/*.backup-before-nix files exist, move them back.

mv /etc/profile.backup-before-nix /etc/profile
mv /etc/bashrc.backup-before-nix /etc/bashrc
mv /etc/zshrc.backup-before-nix /etc/zshrc

Look in ~/.bash_profile and remove the lines which refer to nix.

Remove user-specific config files:

rm -rf /Users/USER_NAME/.nix-*

Now close your terminal and open a new one to clear all the environment variables.

Installing nix

Install nix again using the instructions above.

A nix channel will be added for the latest stable nixpkgs release (see nix-channel --list).

How to build directly from GitHub

To build any branch straight from a GitHub tarball:

nix-build https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl/archive/develop.tar.gz -A cardano-wallet

Links

NixOS is a complete Linux distribution based on the Nix language.

The complete source of NixOS and the Nix packages collection are on GitHub.