Fetchers

Building software with Nix often requires downloading source code and other files from the internet. nixpkgs provides fetchers for different protocols and services. Fetchers are functions that simplify downloading files.

Caveats

Fetchers create fixed output derivations from downloaded files. Nix can reuse the downloaded files via the hash of the resulting derivation.

The fact that the hash belongs to the Nix derivation output and not the file itself can lead to confusion. For example, consider the following fetcher:

fetchurl {
  url = "http://www.example.org/hello-1.0.tar.gz";
  hash = "sha256-lTeyxzJNQeMdu1IVdovNMtgn77jRIhSybLdMbTkf2Ww=";
};

A common mistake is to update a fetcher’s URL, or a version parameter, without updating the hash.

fetchurl {
  url = "http://www.example.org/hello-1.1.tar.gz";
  hash = "sha256-lTeyxzJNQeMdu1IVdovNMtgn77jRIhSybLdMbTkf2Ww=";
};

This will reuse the old contents. Remember to invalidate the hash argument, in this case by setting the hash attribute to an empty string.

fetchurl {
  url = "http://www.example.org/hello-1.1.tar.gz";
  hash = "";
};

Use the resulting error message to determine the correct hash.

error: hash mismatch in fixed-output derivation '/path/to/my.drv':
         specified: sha256-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=
            got:    sha256-lTeyxzJNQeMdu1IVdovNMtgn77jRIhSybLdMbTkf2Ww=

A similar problem arises while testing changes to a fetcher's implementation. If the output of the derivation already exists in the Nix store, test failures can go undetected. The invalidateFetcherByDrvHash function helps prevent reusing cached derivations.

`fetchurl` and `fetchzip`

Two basic fetchers are fetchurl and fetchzip. Both of these have two required arguments, a URL and a hash. The hash is typically hash, although many more hash algorithms are supported. Nixpkgs contributors are currently recommended to use hash. This hash will be used by Nix to identify your source. A typical usage of fetchurl is provided below.

{ stdenv, fetchurl }:

stdenv.mkDerivation {
  name = "hello";
  src = fetchurl {
    url = "http://www.example.org/hello.tar.gz";
    hash = "sha256-BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB=";
  };
}

The main difference between fetchurl and fetchzip is in how they store the contents. fetchurl will store the unaltered contents of the URL within the Nix store. fetchzip on the other hand, will decompress the archive for you, making files and directories directly accessible in the future. fetchzip can only be used with archives. Despite the name, fetchzip is not limited to .zip files and can also be used with any tarball.

`fetchpatch`

fetchpatch works very similarly to fetchurl with the same arguments expected. It expects patch files as a source and performs normalization on them before computing the checksum. For example, it will remove comments or other unstable parts that are sometimes added by version control systems and can change over time.

relative: Similar to using git-diff's --relative flag, only keep changes inside the specified directory, making paths relative to it.
stripLen: Remove the first stripLen components of pathnames in the patch.
decode: Pipe the downloaded data through this command before processing it as a patch.
extraPrefix: Prefix pathnames by this string.
excludes: Exclude files matching these patterns (applies after the above arguments).
includes: Include only files matching these patterns (applies after the above arguments).
revert: Revert the patch.

Note that because the checksum is computed after applying these effects, using or modifying these arguments will have no effect unless the hash argument is changed as well.

Most other fetchers return a directory rather than a single file.

`fetchDebianPatch`

A wrapper around fetchpatch, which takes:

patch and hash: the patch's filename without the .patch suffix, and its hash after normalization by fetchpatch ;
pname: the Debian source package's name ;
version: the upstream version number ;
debianRevision: the Debian revision number if applicable ;
the area of the Debian archive: main (default), contrib, or non-free.

Here is an example of fetchDebianPatch in action:

{ lib
, fetchDebianPatch
, buildPythonPackage
}:

buildPythonPackage rec {
  pname = "pysimplesoap";
  version = "1.16.2";
  src = ...;

  patches = [
    (fetchDebianPatch {
      inherit pname version;
      debianRevision = "5";
      name = "Add-quotes-to-SOAPAction-header-in-SoapClient";
      hash = "sha256-xA8Wnrpr31H8wy3zHSNfezFNjUJt1HbSXn3qUMzeKc0=";
    })
  ];

  ...
}

Patches are fetched from sources.debian.org, and so must come from a package version that was uploaded to the Debian archive. Packages may be removed from there once that specific version isn't in any suite anymore (stable, testing, unstable, etc.), so maintainers should use copy-tarballs.pl to archive the patch if it needs to be available longer-term.

`fetchsvn`

Used with Subversion. Expects url to a Subversion directory, rev, and hash.

`fetchgit`

Used with Git. Expects url to a Git repo, rev, and hash. rev in this case can be full the git commit id (SHA1 hash) or a tag name like refs/tags/v1.0.

Additionally, the following optional arguments can be given: fetchSubmodules = true makes fetchgit also fetch the submodules of a repository. If deepClone is set to true, the entire repository is cloned as opposing to just creating a shallow clone. deepClone = true also implies leaveDotGit = true which means that the .git directory of the clone won't be removed after checkout.

If only parts of the repository are needed, sparseCheckout can be used. This will prevent git from fetching unnecessary blobs from server, see git sparse-checkout for more information:

{ stdenv, fetchgit }:

stdenv.mkDerivation {
  name = "hello";
  src = fetchgit {
    url = "https://...";
    sparseCheckout = [
      "directory/to/be/included"
      "another/directory"
    ];
    hash = "sha256-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=";
  };
}

`fetchfossil`

Used with Fossil. Expects url to a Fossil archive, rev, and hash.

`fetchcvs`

Used with CVS. Expects cvsRoot, tag, and hash.

`fetchhg`

Used with Mercurial. Expects url, rev, and hash.

A number of fetcher functions wrap part of fetchurl and fetchzip. They are mainly convenience functions intended for commonly used destinations of source code in Nixpkgs. These wrapper fetchers are listed below.

`fetchFromGitea`

fetchFromGitea expects five arguments. domain is the gitea server name. owner is a string corresponding to the Gitea user or organization that controls this repository. repo corresponds to the name of the software repository. These are located at the top of every Gitea HTML page as owner/repo. rev corresponds to the Git commit hash or tag (e.g v1.0) that will be downloaded from Git. Finally, hash corresponds to the hash of the extracted directory. Again, other hash algorithms are also available but hash is currently preferred.

`fetchFromGitHub`

fetchFromGitHub expects four arguments. owner is a string corresponding to the GitHub user or organization that controls this repository. repo corresponds to the name of the software repository. These are located at the top of every GitHub HTML page as owner/repo. rev corresponds to the Git commit hash or tag (e.g v1.0) that will be downloaded from Git. Finally, hash corresponds to the hash of the extracted directory. Again, other hash algorithms are also available, but hash is currently preferred.

To use a different GitHub instance, use githubBase (defaults to "github.com").

fetchFromGitHub uses fetchzip to download the source archive generated by GitHub for the specified revision. If leaveDotGit, deepClone or fetchSubmodules are set to true, fetchFromGitHub will use fetchgit instead. Refer to its section for documentation of these options.

`fetchFromGitLab`

This is used with GitLab repositories. It behaves similarly to fetchFromGitHub, and expects owner, repo, rev, and hash.

To use a specific GitLab instance, use domain (defaults to "gitlab.com").

`fetchFromGitiles`

This is used with Gitiles repositories. The arguments expected are similar to fetchgit.

`fetchFromBitbucket`

This is used with BitBucket repositories. The arguments expected are very similar to fetchFromGitHub above.

`fetchFromSavannah`

This is used with Savannah repositories. The arguments expected are very similar to fetchFromGitHub above.

`fetchFromRepoOrCz`

This is used with repo.or.cz repositories. The arguments expected are very similar to fetchFromGitHub above.

`fetchFromSourcehut`

This is used with sourcehut repositories. Similar to fetchFromGitHub above, it expects owner, repo, rev and hash, but don't forget the tilde (~) in front of the username! Expected arguments also include vc ("git" (default) or "hg"), domain and fetchSubmodules.

If fetchSubmodules is true, fetchFromSourcehut uses fetchgit or fetchhg with fetchSubmodules or fetchSubrepos set to true, respectively. Otherwise, the fetcher uses fetchzip.

`requireFile`

requireFile allows requesting files that cannot be fetched automatically, but whose content is known. This is a useful last-resort workaround for license restrictions that prohibit redistribution, or for downloads that are only accessible after authenticating interactively in a browser. If the requested file is present in the Nix store, the resulting derivation will not be built, because its expected output is already available. Otherwise, the builder will run, but fail with a message explaining to the user how to provide the file. The following code, for example:

requireFile {
  name = "jdk-${version}_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz";
  url = "https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase-jdk11-downloads.html";
  sha256 = "94bd34f85ee38d3ef59e5289ec7450b9443b924c55625661fffe66b03f2c8de2";
}

results in this error message:

***
Unfortunately, we cannot download file jdk-11.0.10_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz automatically.
Please go to https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase-jdk11-downloads.html to download it yourself, and add it to the Nix store
using either
  nix-store --add-fixed sha256 jdk-11.0.10_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz
or
  nix-prefetch-url --type sha256 file:///path/to/jdk-11.0.10_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz

***