nodejs: unexpected behaviour / usage of hiprio

[h0nIg]

Nixpkgs version

• Stable (25.05)

Describe the bug

hiPrio usage was introduced by 6462eb6 / @domenkozar - unfortunately without reasoning.

We suddenly ran into the situation, that nixpkgs.nodejs (nodejs v22) and nixpkgs.nodejs_20 were in the nested buildInputs, but the collision was not detected. We were wondering why nodejs will always win, until we have noticed the hiPrio usage. Users do not expect something to happen for all-packages.nix attributes, please reconsider the usage - it looks like a quick fix which is 8 years old.

Steps to reproduce

  pkgs.buildEnv rec {
    name = "xxx";
    paths = [pkgs.nodejs_20 pkgs.nodejs];
  }

Expected behaviour

collision error

Screenshots

No response

Relevant log output

Additional context

No response

System metadata

n/a

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[h0nIg]

CC @aduh95

[aduh95]

I don't have more context that what you shared on why we're using hiPrio; as you linked, it's been this way since long before I was involved with Nix or even Node.js. I don't have any objection for changing that as long as we don't backport the change.

[h0nIg]

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/413169/files