nixpkgs: allow packages to be marked insecure

If a package's meta has `knownVulnerabilities`, like so:

    stdenv.mkDerivation {
      name = "foobar-1.2.3";

      ...

      meta.knownVulnerabilities = [
        "CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution"
        "CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation"
      ];
    }

and a user attempts to install the package, they will be greeted with
a warning indicating that maybe they don't want to install it:

    error: Package ‘foobar-1.2.3’ in ‘...default.nix:20’ is marked as insecure, refusing to evaluate.

    Known issues:

     - CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution
     - CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation

    You can install it anyway by whitelisting this package, using the
    following methods:

    a) for `nixos-rebuild` you can add ‘foobar-1.2.3’ to
       `nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages` in the configuration.nix,
       like so:

         {
           nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages = [
             "foobar-1.2.3"
           ];
         }

    b) For `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-shell` or any other Nix command you can add
    ‘foobar-1.2.3’ to `permittedInsecurePackages` in
    ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix, like so:

         {
           permittedInsecurePackages = [
             "foobar-1.2.3"
           ];
         }

Adding either of these configurations will permit this specific
version to be installed. A third option also exists:

  NIXPKGS_ALLOW_INSECURE=1 nix-build ...

though I specifically avoided having a global file-based toggle to
disable this check. This way, users don't disable it once in order to
get a single package, and then don't realize future packages are
insecure.

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1703.xml b/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1703.xml
index 3758a3bf2aac..38693437059b 100644
--- a/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1703.xml
+++ b/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1703.xml
@@ -30,6 +30,14 @@ has the following highlights: </para>
   <listitem>
     <para>PHP now defaults to PHP 7.1</para>
   </listitem>
+
+  <listitem>
+    <para>Packages in nixpkgs can be marked as insecure through listed
+    vulnerabilities. See the <link
+    xlink:href="https://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual/#sec-allow-insecure">Nixpkgs
+    manual</link> for more information.</para>
+  </listitem>
+
 </itemizedlist>
 
 <para>The following new services were added since the last release:</para>