path: root/doc/manual/bugs.xml

<appendix><title>Bugs / To-Do</title>

<itemizedlist>

    <listitem>
      <para>
        The man-pages generated from the DocBook documentation are ugly.
      </para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para>
        Generations properly form a tree.  E.g., if after switching to
        generation 39, we perform an installation action, a generation
        43 is created which is a descendant of 39, not 42.  So a
        rollback from 43 ought to go back to 39.  This is not
        currently implemented; generations form a linear sequence.
      </para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para>
        Unify the concepts of successors and substitutes into a
        general notion of <emphasis>equivalent expressions</emphasis>.
        Expressions are equivalent if they have the same target paths
        with the same identifiers.  However, even though they are
        functionally equivalent, they may differ stronly with respect
        to their <emphasis>performance characteristics</emphasis>.
        For example, realising a closure expression is more efficient
        that realising the derivation expression from which it was
        produced.  On the other hand, distributing sources may be more
        efficient (storage- or bandwidth-wise) than distributing
        binaries.  So we need to be able to attach weigths or
        priorities or performance annotations to expressions; Nix can
        then choose the most efficient expression dependent on the
        context.
      </para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para>
        <emphasis>Build management.</emphasis>  In principle it is already
        possible to do build management using Nix (by writing builders that
        perform appropriate build steps), but the Nix expression language is
        not yet powerful enough to make this pleasant (?).  The language should
        be extended with features from the <ulink
          url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/maak/'>Maak build manager</ulink>.
        Another interesting idea is to write a <command>make</command>
        implementation that uses Nix as a back-end to support <ulink
          url='http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#legacy'>legacy</ulink> 
        build files.
      </para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para>
        The current garbage collector is a hack.  It should be
        integrated into <command>nix-store</command>.  It should
        delete derivations in an order determined by topologically
        sorting derivations under the points-to relation.  This
        ensures that no store paths ever exist that point to
        non-existant store paths.
      </para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para>
        There are race conditions between the garbage collector and
        other Nix tools.  For instance, when we run
        <command>nix-env</command> to build and install a derivation
        and run the garbage collector at the same time, the garbage
        collector may kick in exactly between the build and
        installation steps, i.e., before the newly built derivation
        has become reachable from a root of the garbage collector.
      </para>

      <para>
        One solution would be for these programs to properly register
        temporary roots for the collector.  Another would be to use
        stop-the-world garbage collection: if any tool is running, the
        garbage collector blocks, and vice versa.  These solutions do
        not solve the situation where multiple tools are involved,
        e.g.,

        <screen>
$ nix-store -r $(nix-instantiate foo.nix)</screen>

        since even if <command>nix-instantiate</command> where to
        register a temporary root, it would be released by the time
        <command>nix-store</command> is started.  A solution would be
        to write the intermediate value to a file that is used as a
        root to the collector, e.g.,
        
        <screen>
$ nix-instantiate foo.nix > /nix/var/nix/roots/bla
$ nix-store -r $(cat /nix/var/nix/roots/bla)</screen>

      </para>
    </listitem>

<listitem><para>For security, <command>nix-push</command> manifests
should be digitally signed, and <command>nix-pull</command> should
verify the signatures.  The actual NAR archives in the cache do not
need to be signed, since the manifest contains cryptographic hashes of
these files (and <filename>fetchurl.nix</filename> checks
them).</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>We should switch away from MD5, since it has been
more-or-less cracked.  We don't currently depend very much on the
collision-resistance of MD5, but we will once we start sharing build
results between users.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>It would be useful to have an option in
<command>nix-env --delete-generations</command> to remove non-current
generations older than a certain age.</para></listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</appendix>