Merge pull request #9617 from 9999years/stack-overflow-segfault

Fix segfault on infinite recursion in some cases

(cherry picked from commit bf1b294bd81ca76c5ec9fe3ecd52196bf52a8300)
Change-Id: Id137541426ec8536567835953fccf986a3aebf16

1 files changed, 32 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/manual/rl-next/stack-overflow-segfaults.md b/doc/manual/rl-next/stack-overflow-segfaults.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..3d9753248
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/rl-next/stack-overflow-segfaults.md
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+synopsis: Some stack overflow segfaults are fixed
+issues: 9616
+prs: 9617
+---
+
+The number of nested function calls has been restricted, to detect and report
+infinite function call recursions. The default maximum call depth is 10,000 and
+can be set with [the `max-call-depth`
+option](@docroot@/command-ref/conf-file.md#conf-max-call-depth).
+
+This fixes segfaults or the following unhelpful error message in many cases:
+
+    error: stack overflow (possible infinite recursion)
+
+Before:
+
+```
+$ nix-instantiate --eval --expr '(x: x x) (x: x x)'
+Segmentation fault: 11
+```
+
+After:
+
+```
+$ nix-instantiate --eval --expr '(x: x x) (x: x x)'
+error: stack overflow
+
+       at «string»:1:14:
+            1| (x: x x) (x: x x)
+             |              ^
+```