[Nix-dev] Typing nix − funding campaign

Maarten Hoogendoorn maarten at moretea.nl
Thu Jan 12 15:50:18 CET 2017


Interesting idea.

Note that Eelco's phd thesis about nix contains a formal definition of both
the syntax and semantics the language.
The whole thesis is well written and approachable.

Potential other benefits from a deeper analysis could include:
- generation of better documentation for helper functions
- or even IDE features like jump to definition


2017-01-12 14:13 GMT+01:00 Théophane Hufschmitt <rg_nixos at regnat.ovh>:

> Hi,
>
> I am Théophane Hufschmitt, a french master degree CS student, and I
> wish to start a six month length internship on giving nix a type
> system.
>
> Numtide offered to fund a part of the internship, but we still need
> some help for me to be able to start it.
>
> The goal of the internship is to design (and implement) a type system
> for nix in order to be able to statically get some guaranties about
> the well-foundness of the nixpkgs repo (or any nix expression), in
> complement to hydra or travis tests which may let some inconsistencies
> pass − especially on nixos module system which is way harder to test.
>
> Providing nix with a proper type system is a long running issue (see
> https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/14), and I think a huge
> opportunity for nix to improve its awesomeness.
>
> The crowdfunding campaign (and a slightly more detailled description of
> the project) is open at https://www.gofundme.com/typing-nix, and you
> are all invited to donate.
>
> Of course, I'll be happy to answer any question, by mail or on
> irc/matrix (I am regnat[m] on freenode).
>
> --
> Théophane Hufschmitt
>
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> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
>
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