Is there a way to build Pants in a sandbox? I want...
# generalg
gentle-engine-57253
10/30/2020, 7:34 PMIs there a way to build Pants in a sandbox? I want to create a package for [Nix](https://nixos.org/), and it builds everything in a sandbox to ensure reproducibility.
w
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 7:38 PMbuilding pants from source involves downloading a fair number of tools… it currently manages its own copy of rust in a cache directory
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 7:39 PMwe’d be happy to help patch the bootstrap scripts to allow overriding that to use Nix’s copies instead?
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 7:43 PMthe two things that would be likely to need adaptation are:
1. creating a virtualenv for pants to build itself in… there are probably Nix conventions for this
2. adapting https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/blob/master/build-support/bin/native/cargo.sh to use Nix’s tools
f
flat-zoo-31952
10/30/2020, 7:56 PMlet me know how this goes...i'm more interested in the inverse...using pants to build nix pacakges, but this sounds interesting anyways
g
gentle-engine-57253
10/30/2020, 7:56 PMAnother option is pre-fetching everything before building inside a given directory. A fixed output derivation can run arbitrary commands, the only requirement is the output must be reproducible, because it's verified by hash.
w
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 7:57 PMyea, prefetching is likely also an option.
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:00 PMthe rough idea is that checking out an arbitrary SHA of https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/ and then running the
./pantswitty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:01 PMshorthand for doing that is to run the
release.shwitty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:02 PMbuild-support/bin/release.sh -qg
gentle-engine-57253
10/30/2020, 8:04 PMBuilding in a fixed-output derivation is not a very good idea, it's main purpose is to fetch sources to be used as an input for a normal derivation.
w
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:05 PMok.
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:05 PMyea, i don’t have any experience with Nix, but the concepts of reproducible builds are quite clear, because we try to apply them in Pants as well
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:05 PMhappy to help change our scripts however is necessary to help you!
g
gentle-engine-57253
10/30/2020, 8:06 PMNix is indeed very similar to tools like bazel, please or pants.
gentle-engine-57253
10/30/2020, 8:06 PMExcept it's a package manager and uses a lazy functional language instead of Python.
w
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:07 PMyep.
witty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:08 PMftr,
@ruleswitty-crayon-22786
10/30/2020, 8:09 PManywho. i would try out
build-support/bin/release.sh -q5 Views