In reply to @hsngrmpf:matrix.org

Hey Folks, I have a question regarding splicing.

I am recently hunting cross related issues and I'm trying to wrap my head around why it works how it works.

My question is: Why do we add __spliced to packages by traversing the top-level?
eg, why is splicing not done in mkDerivation? Why is not every package spliced by default? Wouldn't that be simpler?

The problems I currently see:

• Everything that is not in the top level package set is not spliced.
• dynamic interactions like overrides seem to break splicing (no __spliced after overriding).

It seems to me that this would not be an issue if mkDerivation itself would take care of the splicing. But probably I'm missing something and I would like to understand what.

John Ericson infinisil Robert Hensing (roberth)