Add a mechanism for derivation attributes to reference the derivation's outputs

For example, you can now say:

  configureFlags = "--prefix=${placeholder "out"} --includedir=${placeholder "dev"}";

The strings returned by the ‘placeholder’ builtin are replaced at
build time by the actual store paths corresponding to the specified
outputs.

Previously, you had to work around the inability to self-reference by doing stuff like:

  preConfigure = ''
    configureFlags+=" --prefix $out --includedir=$dev"
  '';

or rely on ad-hoc variable interpolation semantics in Autoconf or Make
(e.g. --prefix=\$(out)), which doesn't always work.

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/libexpr/primops.cc b/src/libexpr/primops.cc
index 6a4a7a035..51ee16353 100644
--- a/src/libexpr/primops.cc
+++ b/src/libexpr/primops.cc
@@ -673,6 +673,19 @@ static void prim_derivationStrict(EvalState & state, const Pos & pos, Value * *
 }
 
 
+/* Return a placeholder string for the specified output that will be
+   substituted by the corresponding output path at build time. For
+   example, ‘placeholder "out"’ returns the string
+   /1rz4g4znpzjwh1xymhjpm42vipw92pr73vdgl6xs1hycac8kf2n9. At build
+   time, any occurence of this string in an derivation attribute will
+   be replaced with the concrete path in the Nix store of the output
+   ‘out’. */
+static void prim_placeholder(EvalState & state, const Pos & pos, Value * * args, Value & v)
+{
+    mkString(v, hashPlaceholder(state.forceStringNoCtx(*args[0], pos)));
+}
+
+
 /*************************************************************
  * Paths
  *************************************************************/
@@ -1893,6 +1906,7 @@ void EvalState::createBaseEnv()
 
     // Derivations
     addPrimOp("derivationStrict", 1, prim_derivationStrict);
+    addPrimOp("placeholder", 1, prim_placeholder);
 
     // Networking
     addPrimOp("__fetchurl", 1, prim_fetchurl);