Noctalia-shell and templates

[karldelandsheere]

Hi! Prior to moving to wrappers, I've been using Noctalia-shell templates for some apps like helix, yazi, etc.

As an example, for helix, it creates it under ~/.config/helix/themes/noctalia.toml

How can I use it in my wrapped helix config? Is there a way to add this directory? Or source the content to an entry in themes = {}?

Cheers!

[BirdeeHub]

I... am not entirely sure. in general nix is highly likely to break that sort of thing, this even more so.

Noctalia-shell allows you to specify where these files are placed correct? I would have it place them directly into my config directory and then use readFile, personally.

Many programs allow you to include a file at a particular location, for those you could just tell it to look wherever noctalia-shell puts the thing at runtime.

Many modules also allow this. i.e. you can often put an impure path in options that take a path.

But the helix module currently does not allow this for themes, because the option for themes in that module does not take paths.

And as far as I am aware, helix config cannot specify arbitrary theme locations either (although maybe when helix gets a plugin API, you will be able to pick somewhere via that)

However, we can cheat it a bit, it won't be the easiest thing...

in the helix module:

# and do NOT make a theme in config.themes named noctalia or it will overwrite this one.
config.buildCommand.linkThemeHack = ''
  mkdir -p "${config.generatedConfig.placeholder}/helix/themes"
  ln -s /home/YOURUSER/.config/helix/themes/noctalia.toml "${config.generatedConfig.placeholder}/helix/themes"
'';

Alternatively, just use it normally, and copy the file into your config yourself.

[karldelandsheere]

First off, thanks a lot for this reply!

It works perfectly! (I was just dumb enough to have pasted your snippet at the wrong place but I debugged my way out of stupidity x))

Thanks a lot!

The "final" code is:

buildCommand.linkThemeHack = let
  themesdir = "${config.generatedConfig.placeholder}/helix/themes";
  homedir = "/home/unnamedplayer";
in ''
  mkdir -p "${themesdir}"
  ln -s "${homedir}/.config/helix/themes/noctalia.toml" "${themesdir}"
'';

[BirdeeHub]

You should make an option for homedir too, and use the value there, so you can .wrap and add it in your home manager or nixos config on import!

(sorry, links can't do ~... which is unfortunate...)

[karldelandsheere]

Yeah. Following your suggestion, I tried to do that but I'm not sure how to make that work.

Just to be sure, I have to declare the option within the wrapper, right? And then, how do I set its value? Sorry, I think I'm missing something ^^'.

[BirdeeHub]

So, in the wrapper module you would make the option yes

# if you imported this module in your helix wrapper module
{ config, lib, pkgs, wlib, ... }: {
  options.homeDir = lib.mkOption {
    type = lib.types.str;
    default = "/home/unnamedplayer";
  };
  config.buildCommand.linkThemeHack = let
    themesdir = "${config.generatedConfig.placeholder}/helix/themes";
  in ''
    mkdir -p "${themesdir}"
    ln -s "${config.homeDir}/.config/helix/themes/noctalia.toml" "${themesdir}"
  '';
}

Then in nixos or home manager, there are several ways to install it but all of them allow you to set more options in it somehow

But basically if you have the package or the module, evaluated or not yet evaluated, you can update the settings.

So on install in home manager you can, for example:

{ config, ... }: {
# ...
home.packages = [
  (mywrappedhelix.wrap { homeDir = config.home.homeDirectory; })
];
# ...
}

For many other programs, this is not necessary, as they have some kind of include mechanism that lets you include files, and usually you can use ~ in those and stuff. But since helix needs us to link those, that is as good as that gets probably until they get plugins which let us do a bit more.

[karldelandsheere]

Thanks!

My setup may be a bit weird, I don't know. Or maybe I'm thinking too hard and I'm messing up my modularity. Anyway, here is my solution for now:

In the wrapper:

# Temporary hack to import Noctalia's generated theme
      # https://github.com/BirdeeHub/nix-wrapper-modules/discussions/464
      buildCommand.linkThemeHack = let
        themesDir = "${config.generatedConfig.placeholder}/helix/themes";
      in ''
        mkdir -p "${themesDir}"
        ln -s "/tmp/helix/themes/noctalia.toml" "${themesDir}"
      '';

In my nixos module for noctalia:

systemd.tmpfiles.rules = let
        homeDir = "/home/${config.core.mainUser}";
      in
      [
        "L+ /tmp/helix/themes/noctalia.toml - - - - ${homeDir}/.config/helix/themes/noctalia.toml"
      ];

I know it's not pretty but it works haha. Thanks for your help and your time, and all the work!