hallettj

joined 3 years ago
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1
How do you find non-top-level packages in nixpkgs? (beehaw.org)
 

This is something that I struggle with. I know how to find top-level packages like git or cowsay. But what about utilities under nested paths? I always spend ages digging through the nixpkgs source code to try to find utilities to use in my nix expressions.

Today I want to use buildRustPackage. It's defined here, and is propagated here. But how do I access it given a pkgs variable? I have no idea!

https://search.nixos.org/packages is no help

nix search nixpkgs doesn't find it

I think I need to search by attribute name, not by derivation name. But I don't know how to do that.

1
[How To] check Home Manager dconf settings (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by hallettj@beehaw.org to c/nixos@lemmy.ml
0 comments fedilink
 

It took me a while to figure this out. I use Home Manager to manage my Gnome settings by setting dconf.settings = { ... }. My settings are non-trivial (for example my paperwm module). So it's helpful for me to check the actual dconf settings that Home Manager produces.

To do that build your configuration with home-manager build, open result/activate, and find a line that looks like this:

$DRY_RUN_CMD $DCONF_DBUS_RUN_SESSION /nix/store/4ab7dx08wx640444m71axlqvbrvz73bv-dconf-0.40.0/bin/dconf load / 
  < /nix/store/0hdnvwx8d9sifd6ib8n2hhblyblq0ccp-hm-dconf.ini

The store path for hm-dconf.ini has the settings.

Edit: added a line break to the script line so you can see the relevant store path

Need advice for backup software for linux in c/linux@lemmy.ml
[โ€“] hallettj@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago

Yeah, with those options it's easier to back up your whole home directory, and then daily backups only take a minute or so and a small amount of additional space to back up what's changed since the day before.

NuShell: a very nice shell I found today. What do you think? in c/foss@beehaw.org
[โ€“] hallettj@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago

I think the best way to get an idea is to look at feature lists for fancy shells like zsh or fish. But in short there are a number of things a good shell can do to help to execute commands faster and more easily. Stuff like autocompletions which make you faster, and also make things more discoverable; fuzzy searching/matching; navigating command history; syntax highlighting which helps to spot errors, and helps to understand the syntax of the command you're writing.