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add inherit section to language basics
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| An inherit statement can be used to _pull_ values out of a parent scope | ||
| into the current one. Values are whitespace separated and the statement | ||
| ends with a `;`. They are valid only in `let` blocks and inside | ||
| attribute sets. | ||
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| If an attribute set in parenthesis follows immediately after the `inherit` | ||
| keyword, then values can also be pulled directly out of the given set. | ||
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| In a `let` block, inherit statements can also come before the values they | ||
| reference, so long as they are in the same block. | ||
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| ```nix | ||
| let | ||
| inherit (set.values) name version; | ||
| set.values = { | ||
| name = "package"; | ||
| version = "0.1.0"; | ||
| }; | ||
| in | ||
| { inherit name version; } == set.values | ||
| ``` |
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I think we should separate this into two separate examples, one with just inherit pulling defined values, and then another with pulling values from an attr set.
Also, nix repl might be better here, so we don't have to leverage a let block
nix-repl> name = "foo"
nix-repl> version = "0.1.0"
nix-repl> :p { inherit name version; }
{ name = "foo"; version = "0.1.0"; }
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I was deliberately attempting to be concise, although I'm not super against splitting it in two examples either, however in this case isn't the let block part of the demonstration since it's one of two places where an inherit can ocur?
Also, in regards to repl style blocks, I was attempting to follow the Rust way of writing valid code blocks that could be pulled out and evaluated independantly to a boolean. It'd be great if we could somehow find a way to automate this to ensure our examples stay valid.
However, maybe this isn't as important as with Rust since Nix doesn't really change that much?
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I think there's a lot going on in the blocks, let ... in block, recursive definition of set, then inheriting the value, and then a comparison which isn't demonstrated.
The rust-lang book has a leg up in that you can just execute code. Until then we will need to be more acommodating.
The other thing is that it's not apparent how to run the code, nix eval -f example.nix would probably be right, but that's not apparent to the user.
I've been doing
$ cat <file>
$ <nix command> <file>
For now, but it would be nice to move away from this. Just not sure what would be best.
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Perhaps what is needed is to develop a mdbook plugin to actually evaluate the code in browser and CI, similar to Rust. This is definitely outside of the scope of this PR though.
I went ahead and split this into two (hopefully simpler) examples.
src/ch05-01-language-basics.md
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| version = "0.1.0"; | ||
| }; | ||
| in | ||
| { inherit name version; } == set.values |
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If we ran this in the repl, we could do something like:
nix-repl> { inherit name; } == { name = "foo"; }
true
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| let | ||
| inherit (pkgs) zlib; | ||
| nixpkgs = builtins.getFlake "nixpkgs"; | ||
| pkgs = import nixpkgs { }; | ||
| in | ||
| pkgs.zlib == zlib |
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feel like we could extend this further
| let | |
| inherit (pkgs) zlib; | |
| nixpkgs = builtins.getFlake "nixpkgs"; | |
| pkgs = import nixpkgs { }; | |
| in | |
| pkgs.zlib == zlib | |
| let | |
| inherit (pkgs.zlib) version; | |
| zlibVersion = pkgs.zlib.version; | |
| nixpkgs = builtins.getFlake "nixpkgs"; | |
| pkgs = import nixpkgs { }; | |
| in | |
| zlibVersion == version |
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this would also introduce the "deeply nested" syntax
Closes #15
Also add a table mentioning the collection types in Nix