Common Lisp compilation files (fasl) are not being used

[nagy]

Describe the bug

It seems that our shipped lisps are not using the package provided fasl files. I think the reason for this is a missing asdf-output translation.

Steps To Reproduce

$ HOME=$(mktemp -d); cd

$ nix-shell -p lispPackages.cl-pdf --run "common-lisp.sh --eval '(require :cl-pdf)' --quit"
This is SBCL 2.1.2.nixos, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.

SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
BSD-style licenses.  See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
distribution for more information.

# lots of compilation output

$ ls -lah .cache/common-lisp/sbcl-2.1.2.nixos-linux-x64/nix/store/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 6 user group 120 Oct 22 21:52 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 user group  60 Oct 22 21:52 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 user group  60 Oct 22 21:52 hikw808j7b082z87d3rjmpz005m0bq5b-cl-wrapper-script
drwxr-xr-x 3 user group  60 Oct 22 21:52 hm0r08y0z9rz2yppi177j6qzdl3fl6sp-lisp-zpb-ttf-release-1.0.4
drwxr-xr-x 3 user group  60 Oct 22 21:52 llk9g31j4jzpmcy85vq747zwl61gwns0-lisp-iterate-20210228-git
drwxr-xr-x 3 user group  60 Oct 22 21:52 zkavzn6fh6v1bi2kmlw4382pwyfaws9z-lisp-cl-pdf-20210228-git

$

The lisp has recompiled the files into its cache in the user-directory, but the package ships with fasl files already:

$ ls /nix/store/zkavzn6fh6v1bi2kmlw4382pwyfaws9z-lisp-cl-pdf-20210228-git/lib/common-lisp/cl-pdf/*.fasl
/nix/store/zkavzn6fh6v1bi2kmlw4382pwyfaws9z-lisp-cl-pdf-20210228-git/lib/common-lisp/cl-pdf/bar-codes.fasl
/nix/store/zkavzn6fh6v1bi2kmlw4382pwyfaws9z-lisp-cl-pdf-20210228-git/lib/common-lisp/cl-pdf/chart.fasl
/nix/store/zkavzn6fh6v1bi2kmlw4382pwyfaws9z-lisp-cl-pdf-20210228-git/lib/common-lisp/cl-pdf/cl-pdf--system.fasl
# ...
$

I was able to get it somewhat to work by putting this content into ~/.sbclrc or ~/.eclrc:

(require :asdf)
(asdf:initialize-output-translations '(:output-translations ("/nix/store" t) :inherit-configuration))

The problem with this is that now all derivations inside the nix-store need to ship with fasl files, otherwise we get something like a "read-only" error because the compiler tries to write its fasl file to the nix-store, which it cant. Ideally the directory ~/.cache/common-lisp/*/nix/store should be empty or not exist at all.

I suggest that we properly setup the ASDF-output-translation to fix this, but I dont know how yet.

Expected behavior

The lisp should use the fasl files provided by the derivation.

Notify maintainers

CC @7c6f434c Do you know who else we can ping into the conversation?

Metadata

Please run nix-shell -p nix-info --run "nix-info -m" and paste the result.

[user@system:~]$ nix-shell -p nix-info --run "nix-info -m"
 - system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 5.14.12, NixOS, 21.11 (Porcupine)`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `yes`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.3.16`
 - channels(user): `"emacs-overlay, home-manager, nur, nixos-21.05-21.05.1226.f77036342e2"`
 - channels(root): `"nixos-21.11pre323790.5f0194220f2"`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos`

Maintainer information:

# a list of nixpkgs attributes affected by the problem
attribute: lispPackages
# a list of nixos modules affected by the problem
module:

[7c6f434c]

We do set this up if you load the package lisp launcher or source the settings file (as /nix/store/:/nix/store/), and indeed this requires some care, and naively doing by putting paths into $ASDF_OUTPUT_TRANSLATIONS one by one exceeded some limits…

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info