Floco ( alpha name: at-node-nix )

XXX: This project has moved to https://github.com/aakropotkin/floco

Node.js Nix expressions.

Dynamically convert package.json, package-lock.json, NPM Registry Packuments, and other forms of package metadata to a common Nix friendly format: metaEnt and metaSet. Generate build recipes ( derivations ) pkgEnt, and collect them in pkgSets.

Build directly from package locks with minimal effort.

Modular build pipeline supports npm run build, npm install ( including node-gyp ), and npm run test style targets “out of the box”. Customize these and add your own using the evalScripts base or stdenv.mkDerivation.

Flexibile fetchers with flocoFetch and flocoUnpack make it easy to customize where your sources and pulled from, how they’re processed, and how they’re cached.

mkNmDir* and mkSourceTree node_modules/ tree builders can be written from scratch with a user friendly syntax, parsed from a lock, or generated from metaSet dependency info.

Overlays make patching metadata and builders easy. Composing package sets and overlays follow conventional Nixpkgs patterns. These can be integrated into the base build pipeline. Expose these overlays in flakes’ flocoOverlays to reuse them across projects.

Libs and utilities are organized such that you can use them in your projects without adopting or learning the whole “framework” - take what you want and skip the rest.

About

The purpose of this flake is to provide you with useful utilities for building Node.js+Nix projects in whatever context or toolkit you choose. While the pkgSet interfaces use pure Nix+Bash builders, you should view pkgSet and metaSet as abstractions which may be used with any setup - you just need to provide the bindings/implementations for their prototypes.

During alpha phase this project was named at-node-nix. The released tool will be named “Floco”.

Getting Started

The best place to get started is going to be with the templates provided by the top level flake. The template simple is best for a trivial project, and doesn’t try to magically convert any lock-files or other metadata. The default project template is intended for working on a package-lock.json(v2/3) project.

mkdir -p foo;
cd foo;
nix flake init --template github:aameen-tulip/at-node-nix;
git init;
git add *;

# Run a build of the dummy project
nix build -L;

# Run tests on the dummy project
nix build .#test -L --no-link;

# Add a new dependency:
NPM_CONFIG_LOCKFILE_VERSION=3  \
npm i --ignore-scripts --package-lock-only foo --save-dev;

# Modify and rebuild
jq '.scripts.build|="foo --version|tee foo.log"' ./package.json > package.json~;
mv ./package.json~ ./package.json;
nix build -L;

# generate a cache to help skip some dynamic lock processing.
nix run .#regen-cache -- --dev --json > meta.json;
git add meta.json;
nix build -L;

# see metadata for my package.
nix eval --impure --json '.#metaSet."my-project/1.0.0".__serial'|jq;

# See `node_modules/' setup script.
nix eval --impure --raw .#pacakge.nmDirCmd;

# See floco packaging metadata
nix eval --json .#metaSet.__serial|jq;

Examples

Learning is best taken a piece at a time. There’s a lot this framework can do, but you’ll only grab a few modules for any given project so you can pick things up as you go. It might be hard to know where to start, so aside from the example above I recommend the templates, tests, and some real builders.

Personally I think a good jumping off point is reading how we bootstrap pacote ( click the link ), since it doesn’t involve any overlays or package metadata collection. It’s a barebones build with a lot of documentation, but it’s still a lot to digest.

There’s no expectation that you’ll absorb that yet, but it can help you write a first project using simple template since it’s a self contained definition built on top of that template. I imagine you’ll copy chunks from there until you are ready to explore more and replace it.

Take a look at a trivial node-gyp build that manually creates a node_modules/ tree as a way to get your feet wet: msgpack. This looks very similar to the trivial template and is a good place to start playing with buildGyp and compare it to evalScripts.

There’s similar simple projects out on the flocoPackages. repo especially under the pkgs/BINS/* directory.

Past that read the README.org files under pkgs/, and then explore the test suite examples and more of flocoPackages.

Interfaces and Tools

genMeta

A script that generates a static metaSet file from an Node.js package descriptor. This metadata can be read from a file using lib.metaSetFromSerial and used to generate builders ( or whatever else you care to use it for ). This is ideal for published modules whose package.json and package-lock.json file does not change.

Personally I use it to write standalone builders for packages with install scripts, and in some cases I’ll use it to generate and package modules with CLI tools or other standalone executables.

This has been exposed as a flake output as an “app”, so nix run at-node-nix#genMeta -- @foo/bar@1.0.0; will allow you run this script from anywhere.

For example, when developing a project you may run into registry tarballs who have install scripts or node-gyp builds with large dependency graphs. While buildGyp can generally build these modules without any dependencies in its working directory, you’ll definitely encounter cases where you need to provide some dependencies members for a build to succeed. In such a case, you can use genMeta @foo/bar@4.2.0 > foo-bar-4.2.0-meta.nix; to provide the minimal metaSet required to run that install routine with a builder such as mkPkgEntSource and installPkgEnt along with mkNmDirCmd*.

See nix run at-node-nix#genMeta -- --help for more info.

ExtInfo

A “class-like” attrset made to be extensible into various forms of meta-data entries and collections; these are truly functors, meaning they are abstract data type that can act either as “records” or functions with self-reference ( so… basically but not technically a “classy thing” ).

At bottom this is a good old fashioned recursive attrset, with a few functors that take self as an arg. It’s designed to be extended into whatever you might normally use makeScope, lib.extends, lib.fix, or similar lib/customization.nix and lib/fixed-points.nix routines to do; but rolled into a single object with complementary usage.

This is the base that meta(Ent|Set) and several other constructs are built on. Note that while older routines used extInfo for pkg(Ent|Set) that usage was deprecated in favor of standard Nixpkgs patterns for easier interop.

Routines

The most notable base routines are __serial and __extend.

• __serial: Serialize objects into representations suitable for builtins.toJSON to dump to disk.
  • This may ( and should ) be customized to suit your use case; but the default serializer is quite useful as is.
• __extend: This is literally just lib.extends ( commonly seen as nixpkgs.extend or lib.extend ) but renamed to avoid clashing with any fields which might use that name.
  • The uniform “__<FN>” naming scheme also makes it easy to hide functors in order to map over data fields.

metaEnt and metaSet.

Used to aggregate various types of package metadata into a common collection. The purpose of this attrset is to convert package.json, package-lock.json, packument.json, blub.json, or whatever other metadata you’ve got into a uniform attrs that can later be transformed into derivations or otherwise processed by this code-base’s utilities.

• metaEntFrom*: These routines convert metadata focused on a single module/package into metaEnt.
  • metaEntFromPjs: Converts package.json data to metaEnt. TODO
  • metaEntFromPlockV1: Converts a single entry from package-lock.json(v1/2) to metaEnt.
  • metaEntFromPlockV3: Converts a single entry from package-lock.json(v2/3) to metaEnt.
  • You are encouraged to add new transformers.
• metaSetFrom*: These routines convert metadata a collection of modules/pacakges ( metaEnt ) into a group as metaSet.
  • metaSetFromPjs: Converts package.json workspace to metaSet. TODO
  • metaSetFromPlockV1: Converts dependencies (v1/2) fields in package-lock.json to metaSet.
  • metaSetFromPlockV3: Converts packages (v2/3) fields in package-lock.json to metaSet.
  • You are encouraged to add new transformers.

pkgEnt and pkgSet

Derivation collections of package builders created from meta(Ent|Set) attrs.

See docs and examples in the pkgSets readme.

Flake Outputs

This flake provides an overlay which extends ak-nix and nixpkgs which is the preferred avenue for using these routines.

legacyPackages.<SYSTEM> Output

An extension of Nixpkgs’ legacyPackages that adds outputs.overlays.default. This is a convenient way to use at-node-nix routines in your projects without fussing with overlay management.

For example to symlink unpacked sources from a package-lock.json(v2/3) into the current working directory:

nix eval --impure --raw --expr 'let
  pkgsFor = ( builtins.getFlake "github:aameen-tulip/at-node-nix" ).legacyPackages.${builtins.currentSystem};
  nmdir   = pkgsFor.mkNmDirPlockV3 { lockDir = toString ./.; };
in "${nmdir}\ninstallNodeModules;"'|bash;
# `.bin/' members are relative symlinks. 
ls -la ./node_modules/**;

These tarballs will be cached by Nix for reuse.

lib Output

The lib output contains routines which are not system dependendant and these never reference derivations, so you can freely access them “purely” even when system is unknown.

In some cases these routines may bottom out into routines which accept derivations or system as args so that they can provide common interfaces for various routines ( libfetch for example ); but the expressions themselves are not system dependant.

Hidden Gems and Miscellaneous Expressions

Beyond that the lib and several pkgs/ builders were designed for general-purpose use, or use with NPM and Yarn rather than pkgSet or metaSet, while I may not focus too much on documenting those expressions.

I do advise readers to take a look at them, because they may save you a lot of pain and suffering if you were to try and implement similar routines from scratch.

Footnotes

[fn:ADT] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2009/essay.pdf