Add primop ‘scopedImport’

‘scopedImport’ works like ‘import’, except that it takes a set of
attributes to be added to the lexical scope of the expression,
essentially extending or overriding the builtin variables.  For
instance, the expression

  scopedImport { x = 1; } ./foo.nix

where foo.nix contains ‘x’, will evaluate to 1.

This has a few applications:

* It allows getting rid of function argument specifications in package
  expressions. For instance, a package expression like:

    { stdenv, fetchurl, libfoo }:

    stdenv.mkDerivation { ... buildInputs = [ libfoo ]; }

  can now we written as just

    stdenv.mkDerivation { ... buildInputs = [ libfoo ]; }

  and imported in all-packages.nix as:

    bar = scopedImport pkgs ./bar.nix;

  So whereas we once had dependencies listed in three places
  (buildInputs, the function, and the call site), they now only need
  to appear in one place.

* It allows overriding builtin functions. For instance, to trace all
  calls to ‘map’:

  let
    overrides = {
      map = f: xs: builtins.trace "map called!" (map f xs);

      # Ensure that our override gets propagated by calls to
      # import/scopedImport.
      import = fn: scopedImport overrides fn;

      scopedImport = attrs: fn: scopedImport (overrides // attrs) fn;

      # Also update ‘builtins’.
      builtins = builtins // overrides;
    };
  in scopedImport overrides ./bla.nix

* Similarly, it allows extending the set of builtin functions. For
  instance, during Nixpkgs/NixOS evaluation, the Nixpkgs library
  functions could be added to the default scope.

There is a downside: calls to scopedImport are not memoized, unlike
import. So importing a file multiple times leads to multiple parsings
/ evaluations. It would be possible to construct the AST only once,
but that would require careful handling of variables/environments.

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/src/libexpr/parser.y b/src/libexpr/parser.y
index dbcffff996..06d6d643f6 100644
--- a/src/libexpr/parser.y
+++ b/src/libexpr/parser.y
@@ -592,7 +592,13 @@ Path resolveExprPath(Path path)
 
 Expr * EvalState::parseExprFromFile(const Path & path)
 {
-    return parse(readFile(path).c_str(), path, dirOf(path), staticBaseEnv);
+    return parseExprFromFile(path, staticBaseEnv);
+}
+
+
+Expr * EvalState::parseExprFromFile(const Path & path, StaticEnv & staticEnv)
+{
+    return parse(readFile(path).c_str(), path, dirOf(path), staticEnv);
 }
 
 
@@ -608,7 +614,7 @@ Expr * EvalState::parseExprFromString(const string & s, const Path & basePath)
 }
 
 
- void EvalState::addToSearchPath(const string & s, bool warn)
+void EvalState::addToSearchPath(const string & s, bool warn)
 {
     size_t pos = s.find('=');
     string prefix;