status-mobile/nix

Description

This folder contains configuration for Nix, a purely functional package manager used by the Status app for its build process.

Configuration

The main config file is nix/nix.conf and its main purpose is defining the binary caches which allow download of packages to avoid having to compile them yourself locally.

NOTE: If you are in Asia you might want to add the https://nix-cache-cn.status.im/ to be first in order of substituters. Removing cache.nixos.org could also help.

Build arguments

We leverage the standard nixpkgs config argument for our own parameterization of the builds (e.g. to pass a build number or build type). Here is a sample structure of the config attribute set:

config = {
  status-im = {
    ci = "1";                 # This flag is present when running in a CI environment
    build-type = "pr";        # Build type (influences which .env file gets used for feature flags)
    status-go = {
      src-override = "$GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/status-go";
    };
    status-react = {
      build-number = "9999";  # Build number to be assigned to the app bundle
      gradle-opts = "";       # Gradle options passed for Android builds
    };
  };
};

Shell

In order to access an interactive Nix shell a user should run make shell.

The Nix shell is started in this repo via the nix/scripts/shell.sh script, which is a wrapper around the nix-shell command and is intended for use with our main Makefile. This allows for an implicit use of nix-shell as the default shell in the Makefile.

Normally the shell starts without any specific target platform, if you want to change that you should export the TARGET env variable with appropriate value:

make shell TARGET=android

This way your shell and all other nix commands should run in a setup that is tailored towards Android development.

For valid values you can check the nix/shells.nix file.

Using a local status-go repository

If you need to use a locally checked-out status-go repository as a dependency of status-react, you can achieve that by defining the STATUS_GO_SRC_OVERRIDE environment variable.

export STATUS_GO_SRC_OVERRIDE=$GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/status-go
# Any command that you run from now on
# will use the specified status-go location
make release-android

or for a one-off build:

make release-android STATUS_GO_SRC_OVERRIDE=$GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/status-go

Using a local Nimbus repository

If you need to use a locally checked-out Nimbus repository as a dependency of status-go, you can achieve that by defining the NIMBUS_SRC_OVERRIDE environment variable, in the same way as the previous point for local status-go repositories.

Known Issues

MacOS 10.15 "Catalina"

There is an unsolved issue with the root(/) file system in 10.15 being read-only: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2925

Our current recommended workaround is putting /nix under /opt/nix and symlinking it via /etc/synthetic.conf:

sudo mkdir /opt/nix
sudo chown ${USER} /opt/nix
sudo sh -c "echo 'nix\t/opt/nix' >> /etc/synthetic.conf"
reboot

After the system reboots you should see the /nix symlink in place:

 % ls -l /nix
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  8 Oct 11 13:53 /nix -> /opt/nix

In order to be able to use Nix with a symlinked /nix you need to include this in your shell:

export NIX_IGNORE_SYMLINK_STORE=1

Add it to your .bashrc or any other shell config file.

NOTE: Your old /nix directory will end up in /Users/Shared/Relocated Items/Security/nix after OS upgrade.

Cache Downloads Timing Out

If copying from Nix Cache times out you can adjust the timeout by changing nix/nix.conf:

stalled-download-timeout = 9001

extra-sandbox-paths Is a Restricted Setting

When building Android on NixOS you might encounter the following error:

ignoring the user-specified setting 'extra-sandbox-paths', because it is a restricted setting and you are not a trusted user

You can mitigate this by setting the nix.trustedUsers property.