Revert "e2fsprogs: build fuse2fs on darwin"

[emilazy]

Description of changes

This change, while fine in isolation, breaks evaluation in combination with #329721, as xar depends on e2fsprogs which now depends on macfuse-stubs which depends on xar. This broke staging-next.

A couple possible solutions are to disable the e2fsprogs dependency in the version of xar used for the bootstrap, or to build macfuse-stubs from source to avoid the xar dependency.

This reverts commit 0dfc820.

cc @KoHcoJlb @7c6f434c @tie @reckenrode

Things done

• Built on platform(s)
  • x86_64-linux
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • aarch64-darwin
• For non-Linux: Is sandboxing enabled in nix.conf? (See Nix manual)
  • sandbox = relaxed
  • sandbox = true
• Tested, as applicable:
  • NixOS test(s) (look inside nixos/tests)
  • and/or package tests
  • or, for functions and "core" functionality, tests in lib/tests or pkgs/test
  • made sure NixOS tests are linked to the relevant packages
• Tested compilation of all packages that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review rev HEAD". Note: all changes have to be committed, also see nixpkgs-review usage
• Tested basic functionality of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• 24.11 Release Notes (or backporting 23.11 and 24.05 Release notes)
  • (Package updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is major or breaking
  • (Module updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is significant
  • (Module addition) Added a release notes entry if adding a new NixOS module
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

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[emilazy]

It seems like that PR hasn’t actually made it to staging-next, so even though this will cause issues, we don’t yet know what the report of an infinite recursion error that looked very much like this is about yet.

[emilazy]

Okay, the commit landed in staging-next now and broke as expected.

[KoHcoJlb]

Or xar could use e2fsprogs with fuse disabled
macfuse went closed-source awhile back, so It's not possible to build it from source

[emilazy]

No, the relevant part of macFUSE is LGPL, as noted in our package definition for the stubs; here’s the repository. If it was non‐free the PR would have been a bigger issue as it would have made e2fsprogs non‐free by default :)

xar overriding e2fsprogs to disable FUSE like that seems reasonable, since it presumably only uses the library. @reckenrode pointed out that macFUSE could also just use a xar without ext2 support to unpack the .pkg and that would also break the loop enough to bring your PR back in. I’m not sure if we’d want to pull the macFUSE stubs into the stdenv bootstrap, though. If we do, we should probably build it from source, at least.

Sorry about the quick revert, but we needed to fix eval on staging-next rather than getting blocked on this. I’m happy to help get your PR back in if we can agree on what the best way to handle this is.

[reckenrode]

Regardless of the macFUSE issue, the stdenv bootstrap probably shouldn’t include e2fsprogs. It’s fine for now, but I’ll probably include in the Darwin refactor using a stripped down xar for cctools and ld64.

One of my goals for the bootstrap is reducing the amount of unnecessary stuff that’s built (e.g., 24.05 builds Python five times during the bootstrap, but the refactor builds it only once). Using a xarMinimal is in line with that. I wonder if xarMinimal be a top-level package?

[emilazy]

We’ve circled back around to #329721 (comment) here. I agree that we should just gate the problematic dependencies behind a single feature flag and use that for the compiler tools.

[KoHcoJlb]

Did you agree on preferred solution?

[emilazy]

We decided that ld64 should probably depend on a xarMinimal that overrides the optional dependencies to null, since it has no business reading ext2 images. That will require a staging cycle for the standard environment bootstrap.

That would break the circular dependency here by itself, but macfuse-stubs could also presumably use a xarMinimal. Ideally we would build it from source, though.

[KoHcoJlb]

Is there anything I can help with? Just wondering how I can get my PR back)

[emilazy]

So the problem is that because of the xar change, e2fsprogs is now an indirect dependency of ld64. Any change to e2fsprogs would rebuild the entire world on Darwin, and therefore needs to go to staging. @reckenrode plans to make ld64 use a stripped‐down xar in his upcoming SDK rework. That will happen for the next staging cycle in a couple of weeks, so unfortunately there’s nothing we can really do to speed that up.

The only thing I can think that we could do in the interim is to add a default‐on flag to e2fsprogs conditionalizing the FUSE stuff, and make sure it’s turned off by the xar in the stdenv bootstrap. If done carefully this will ensure that there are no mass rebuilds, but it will be somewhat ugly and get blown away by the next staging cycle.

Work that would be good for the future but wouldn’t immediately solve this would be to build the macFUSE stubs from source, perhaps even reusing the same derivation that is used for libfuse on Linux, to remove the xar dependency.

Sorry about this unfortunate collision of changes…

[KoHcoJlb]

Ah, I see now, because stdenv now depends on xar/e2fsprogs any changes to them would cause mass rebuild thus need to go to staging.

So after stdenv is decoupled from e2fsprogs should I resubmit my original PR?
Also, if I'm not missing anything, original loop would remain (e2fsprogs -> macfuse-stubs -> xar -> e2fsprogs) which would need to be fixed separately by using xarMinimal in macfuse-stubs or building them from source.
Is this something taken care of as part of xarMinimal refactor or should I submit PR for this as well?

In the meantime I'll try to look into building macfuse-stubs from source, maybe I will submit PR for that too.
By the way will changes to macfuse-stubs cause mass rebuild?

[emilazy]

Yes, it should be fine to revert the revert after the xarMinimal stuff goes in. macfuse-stubs should be able to use xarMinimal, since it’s just unpacking a .xar archive; that can go in the revert‐revert PR. A from‐source build would be ideal, of course, but shouldn’t be required.

I think that we don’t want macfuse-stubs to be part of the bootstrap, so hopefully it won’t cause mass rebuilds after the SDK rework.

[reckenrode]

Status update on the xarMinimal stuff. I’m working to get the draft PR for the Darwin rework up sometime tonight. It will include xarMinimal along with an update of xar to 501, which adds a new API (and then immediately deprecates it).