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Dreams

This page documents the dreams of the Lix team. These are features which we have generally not roadmapped yet, and which may not have complete and thoroughly thought-through plans, and which we would like to think about more completely before implementing. We are writing them down publicly so that others can dream with us.

  • language versioning https://pad.lix.systems/lix-lang-version-investigation [PRIVATE LINK]
  • split the evaluator into a separate process, interact with it only via rpc (horrors)
  • bytecode evaluator with all the possible trappings (horrors)
    • allows arbitrary runtime-define breakpoints, watchpoints, program inspection and manipulation
    • interacts with rpc to allow perfect lsp hosts, better debuggers etc
  • new gc for the evaluator to replace bdw, prototype/template for gc in eventual rust evaluator (horrors)
  • flakes as a library of code that provides new nix subcommands (https://pad.lix.systems/NYy2nww5Tum68KCTduuU8Q#random-bits-that-should-be-noted-down-somewhere [PRIVATE LINK])
  • all authoritative information about the store attached to store objects, not an sqlite database (eg in xattrs or similar) (horrors)
  • redo the lazy trees infra on the basis of "virtual" store paths and mountpoints (turning eg a zip file into a virtual mountpoint /nix/store/lazy/thing.zip/...) (horrors)
    • notably do not use fuse for this, just a pure vfs implementation
  • fully decouple evaluator and store (horrors)
    • tvix has kind of done this with EvalIO, lix needs it too (otherwise the eval-process split will not be possible)
  • store operations state, like "what derivations were realized in the last build" (Qyriad)
    • "what attrpath was this accessed by to build"
  • ✨ fancy ✨ repl, a la IPython and pry (Qyriad)
  • Support instance of Lix running locally off the main page to try out
    • Obviously WebAssembly schenanigans involved
  • replacing nixos-option (jade)
    • CLI commands should be possible to actually deprecate (jade)
  • profiler for nix code (jade)
  • nix develop replace store path but actually good, with bind mounts (jade)
  • nixos-rebuild gets unfucked perhaps with samueldr code (jade)
  • we kinda wanna have inherits consistent by container type such that you can write inherit (thing) [ a b c ] to create a list, inherit (thing) { a b c } to create a set, or nest those in existing lists or sets to extend them in-place like current inherit (horrors)
  • unbreak the io model (horrors)
    • currently nix has an async io model shoved into a sync runtime, and an async model that can't decide whether it's push or pull. this sucks
  • pipe operator (Qyriad)
    • and either haskell's $ or left pipe operator
  • hyperlinked sources in docs (jade)
  • a debug macro like rust's dbg! https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/macro.dbg.html
  • a dependency graph for builds which explains why different dependencies are being built
    • store path truncated to unique names in output...?
  • native nix-output-monitor (nom) style (slash bazel-style) output formatting (showing a live updating list of stuff being built/fetched, with warnings stacking up above it)
    • web viewer for the build graph as it is happening with a nice live log viewer (jade)
      • relatedly: show closure graphs nicely (jade)
  • make the store properly multi-tenant, with things like, e.g. authentication and maybe even certain http done via hooks on the client side (jade)
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