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merging |
Merging records
In Nickel, the basic building blocks for data are records (objects in JSON or attribute sets in Nix). Merging is a fundamental built-in operation whose role is to combine records togethers. Fields common to several records will be themselves recursively merged if possible, following the semantics described in this document.
Merging is useful to compose small and logical blocks into a potentially complex
final configuration, making it more manageable. A merge is performed by the &
operator.
Merge is a symmetric operation (or, pedantically, commutative). In practice,
this means that order doesn't matter, and left & right
is the same thing as
right & left
. When the operands need to be distinguished, as we will see for
default values for example, the idea is to use metadata to do so (annotations),
rather than relying on the left or right position.
Warning: At the time of writing, Nickel's version is 0.1. Important additions to merging are planned for coming versions, including priorities and custom merge functions. They are not detailed here yet. For more details, see the associated technical document RFC001.
The section describes the behavior and use-cases of merge, by considering the following situations:
- Merging two records without common fields
- Merging records with common fields
- Merging records with metadata
- Recursive overriding
Simple merge (no common fields)
Merging two records with no common fields results in a record with the fields
from both operands. That is, {foo = 1, bar = "bar"} & {baz =false}
evaluates
to {foo = 1, bar = "bar", baz = false}
.
Specification
Technically, if we write the left operand as:
left = {
field_left_1 = value_left_1,
..,
field_left_n = value_left_n,
}
And the right operand as:
right {
field_right_1 = value_right_1,
..,
field_right_k = value_right_k
}
Then the merge left & right
evaluates to the record:
{
field_left_1 = value_left_1,
..,
field_left_n = value_left_n,
field_right_1 = value_right_1,
..,
field_right_k = value_right_k
}
In other terms, left & right
is the union of left
and right
.
Examples
Split
You can split a configuration into subdomains:
// file: server.ncl
{
host_name = "example",
host = "example.org",
ip_addr = "0.0.0.0",
}
// file: firewall.ncl
{
enable_firewall = true,
open_ports = [23, 80, 443],
}
// file: network.ncl
let server = import "server.ncl" in
let firewall = import "firewall.ncl" in
server & firewall
This gives:
{
host_name = "example",
host = "example.org",
ip_addr = "0.0.0.0",
enable_firewall = true,
open_ports = [23, 80, 443],
}
Extension
Given a configuration, you can use merge to add new fields:
// file: safe-network.ncl
let base = import "network.ncl" in
base & {use_iptables = true}
Recursive merge (with common fields)
When the two operands have fields in common, those fields are recursively merged. For example:
{
top_left = 1,
common = {left = "left"}}
& {
top_right = 2,
common = {right = "right"}
}
Evaluates to the record:
{
top_left = 1,
top_right = 2,
common = {left = "left", right = "right"}
}
When one or both of the common fields are not records, the merge will fail unless one of the following condition hold:
- They are both of a primitive data type
Num
,Bool
,Enum
,String
and they are equal - They are both null
Specification
left = {
field_left_1 = value_left_1,
..,
field_left_n = value_left_n,
common_1 = common_vleft_1,
..,
common_m = common_vleft_m,
}
And the right operand as:
right {
field_right_1 = value_right_1,
..,
field_right_k = value_right_k
common_1 = common_vright_1,
..,
common_m = common_vright_m,
}
Where the field_left_i
and field_right_j
are distinct for all i
and j
.
Then the merge left & right
evaluates to the record:
{
field_left_1 = value_left_1,
..,
field_left_n = value_left_n,
field_right_1 = value_right_1,
..,
field_right_k = value_right_k
common_1 = common_vleft_1 & common_vright_1,
..,
common_m = common_vleft_m & common_vright_m,
}
For two values v1
and v2
, if at least one value is not a record, then
v1 & v2 = v1 if (type_of(v1) is Num, Bool, Str, Enum or v1 == null)
AND v1 == v2
_|_ otherwise (indicates failure)
Example
// file: udp.ncl
{
// same as firewall = {open_ports = {udp = [...]}},
firewall.open_ports.udp = [12345,12346],
}
// file: tcp.ncl
{
// same as firewall = {open_ports = {tcp = [...]}},
firewall.open_ports.tcp = [23, 80, 443],
}
// firewall.ncl
let udp = import "udp.ncl" in
let tcp = import "tcp.ncl" in
udp & tcp
In the above example, we merge two records, both with a field firewall
. On
both sides, the value is a record, which is therefore merged. The same process
happens one layer below, on the common field open_ports
, to result in the
final record:
{
firewall = {
open_ports = {
udp = [12345, 12346],
tcp = [23, 80, 443],
}
}
}
Merging record with metadata
Metadata can be attached to values thanks to the |
operator. Metadata
currently includes contract annotations, default value, and documentation. We
describe in this section how metadata interacts with merging.
Default values
A default
annotation can be used to provide a base value, but let it be
overridable through merging. For example, {foo | default = 1} & {foo = 2}
evaluates to {foo = 2}
. Without the default value, this merge would have
failed with a non mergeable fields
error, because merging being symmetric, it
doesn't know how to combine 1
and 2
in a generic and meaningful way.
Specification
We can consider the merging system to feature priorities. To each field
definition foo = val
is associated a priority p(val)
. When merging two
common fields value_left
and value_right
, then the results is either the one
with the highest priority (that overrides the other), or the two are tentatively
recursively merged, if the priorities are the same. Without loss of generality,
we consider the simple case of two records with only one field, which is the
same on both side:
{common = left} & {common = right}
= {
common = left if p(left) > p(right)
right if p(left) < p(right)
left & right if p(left) = p(right)
}
Currently, there are only two priorities, normal
(by default, when nothing is
specified) and the default
one, with default < normal
. We plan to add more
in the future (see RFC001).
Example
Let us stick to our firewall example. Thanks to default values, we set the most restrictive configuration by default, which can still be overridden if needed.
Let us first try without default values:
let base = {
firewall.enabled = true,
firewall.type = "iptables",
firewall.open_ports = [21, 80, 443],
} in
let patch = {
firewall.enabled = false,
server.host.options = "TLS",
} in
base & patch
Because merging is meant to be symmetric, Nickel is unable to know which value
to pick between enabled = true
and enabled = false
for the firewall, and
thus fail:
error: non mergeable terms
┌─ repl-input-0:2:22
│
2 │ firewall.enabled = true,
│ ^^^^ cannot merge this expression
·
7 │ firewall.enabled = false,
│ ^^^^^ with this expression
We can use default values to give the priority to the right side:
let base = {
firewall.enabled | default = true,
firewall.type | default = "iptables",
firewall.open_ports | default = [21, 80, 443],
} in
let patch = {
firewall.enabled = false,
server.host.options = "TLS",
} in
base & patch
This evaluates to:
{
firewall = {
enabled = false,
open_ports = [21, 80, 443],
type = "iptables",
},
server = {
host = {
"options": "TLS"
}
}
}
Contracts
Note: see the correctness section and the contracts section for a thorough introduction to contracts in Nickel.
Fields may have contracts attached, either directly, as in {foo | Num = 1}
, or
propagated from an annotation higher up, as in {foo = 1} | {foo | Num}
. In
both cases, foo
must satisfy the contract Num
. What happens if the value of
foo
is altered in a subsequent merge? For example:
- Should
{foo | default | Num = 1} & {foo = "bar"}
succeed, althoughfoo
would be a string in the final result? - Should
{foo.subfield | Str = "a"} & {foo.other_subfield = 1}
succeed, although a closed contract{subfield | Str}
is attached tofoo
, and the final result would have an additional fieldother_subfield
?
Nickel chooses to answer no to both. In general, when a contract is attached
to a field foo
, merging ensures that whatever is this field merged with,
including being dropped in favor of another value, the final value for foo
has
to respect the contract as well or the evaluation will fail accordingly.
Specification
For two operands with one field each, which is the same on both side, with respective
contracts Left1, .., Leftn
and Right1, .., Rightk
attached:
left = {
common | Left1
| ..
| Leftn
}
And
right = {
common | Right1
| ..
| Rightk
}
Then the common
field of left & right
will be checked against Left1, .., Leftn, Right1, .., Rightk
. Here, we ignore the case of type annotations such as
common: LeftType
that can just be considered as an additional contract
Left0
.
Example
let Port
| doc "A valid port number"
= contract.from_predicate (fun value =>
builtin.is_num value &&
value % 1 == 0 &&
value >= 0 &&
value <= 65535) in
let GreaterThan
| doc "A number greater than the paramater"
= fun x => contract.from_predicate (fun value => value > x) in
{
port | GreaterThan 1024
| default = 8080,
} & {
port | Port = 80,
}
This fails at evaluation:
error: contract broken by a value.
[..]
┌─ repl-input-1:16:19
│
16 │ port | Port = 80,
│ ^^ applied to this expression
note:
┌─ repl-input-1:13:12
│
13 │ port | GreaterThan 1024
│ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ bound here
Documentation
Documentation is attached via the doc
keyword. Documentation is propagated
during merging. For example, querying foo
by using the command nickel -f config.ncl query foo
on:
// config.ncl
{
foo | doc "Some documentation"
| = {}
} & {
foo.field = null,
}
Will print "Some documentation"
as expected. If both sides have documentation, the behavior
is unspecified, as merging two distinct blobs of text doesn't make sense
in general. Currently, Nickel will randomly keeps one of the two in practice.
Recursive overriding
We've seen in the section on default values that they are useful to override (update) a single field with a different value. The combo of merging and default values can do more. In Nickel, records are recursive by default, in order to express easily dependencies between the different fields of the configuration. Concretely, you can refer to other fields of a record from within this record:
let base_config = {
version | default = "20.09",
input.url | default = "nixpkgs/nixos-%{version}",
} in
base_config
Here, we referred to version
from the input
field transparently. This
configuration evaluates to:
{
version = "20.09",
input = {url = "nixpkgs/nixos-20.09"},
}
Merging handles overriding on recursive record too. More precisely, when we
override the default value of version
, the fields that depend on version
--
here, input
-- will also be updated automatically. For example, base_config & {version = "unstable"}
will evaluate to:
{
version = "unstable",
input = {url = "nixpkgs/nixos-unstable"},
}
Currently, one can only override a field that has been marked as default beforehand. A more ergonomic way of overriding is planned, and described in RFC001.
Example
Here is another variation of recursive overriding on our firewall
example:
let security = {
firewall.open_proto.http | default = true,
firewall.open_proto.https | default = true,
firewall.open_proto.ftp | default = true,
firewall.open_ports = []
@ (if firewall.open_proto.ftp then [21] else [])
@ (if firewall.open_proto.http then [80] else [])
@ (if firewall.open_proto.https then [443] else []),
} in // => security.firewall.open_ports = [21, 80, 443]
security & {firewall.open_proto.ftp = false} // => firewall.open_ports = [80, 443]
Here, security.firewall.open_ports
is [21, 80, 443]
. But in the returned
configuration (let's call it result
), result.firewall.open_ports = [80, 443]
.