Devhelp: documentation books or useless?

rkoe · October 16, 2019, 10:32am

NixOS/Nixpkgs includes the package devhelp, which is usually used as documentation-browser for GTK+ and other libraries. But devhelp does not find any documentation, and it seems that NixOS/Nixpkgs does not contain any documentation files (or: seems to remove it by default: Nixpkgs 23.11 manual | Nix & NixOS).

So:

How can I add e.g. the GTK+ documentation to devhelp?
Or is devhelp just useless on NixOS?

jtojnar · October 16, 2019, 6:48pm

Hi, I commonly use Devhelp to browse documentation.

When a package builds Devhelp books or gtk-doc docs, they are moved to devdoc output of a package by multiple outputs hook. If the output does not exists, they are removed. Unfortunately some packages still lack that output, or do not build the books at all.

If you enable documentation.dev.enable in your configuration.nix and install packages that have devdoc output to your system profile, Devhelp will be able to find them.

You can also run it without installing the libraries system-wide, which I prefer, using something like env XDG_DATA_DIRS=$(nix-build -A networkmanager.devdoc --no-link)/share devhelp but it is a PITA.

We should add a setup hook, that will set the environment variable appropriately when in a nix-shell.

rkoe · October 22, 2019, 12:32am

Hmm, I’ve set documentation.dev.enable=true, added gtk3 to environment.systemPackages, and then run nixos-rebuild switch.
But still devhelp does not find anyhting.

Any ideas?

jtojnar · October 22, 2019, 9:27am

Yeah, GTK is one of the packages that we are not building docs for at the moment:

github.com

NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/43a3d8dc29e475f1b05121eeb03fe793db6b21bc/pkgs/development/libraries/gtk/3.x.nix#L49


      
          }:
          
          
assert cupsSupport -> cups != null;
          
          
with stdenv.lib;
          
          
stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
            pname = "gtk+3";
            version = "3.24.12";
          
          
  outputs = [ "out" "dev" ];
            outputBin = "dev";
          
          
  setupHooks = [
              ./hooks/gtk3-clean-immodules-cache.sh
              ./hooks/drop-icon-theme-cache.sh
            ];
          
          
  src = fetchurl {
              url = "mirror://gnome/sources/gtk+/${stdenv.lib.versions.majorMinor version}/gtk+-${version}.tar.xz";
              sha256 = "10xyyhlfb0yk4hglngxh2zsv9xrxkqv343df8h01dvagc6jyp10k";

Since we build it even for GLib

github.com

NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/43a3d8dc29e475f1b05121eeb03fe793db6b21bc/pkgs/development/libraries/glib/default.nix#L93


      
            #    * glib-mkenums
            #    * gobject-query
            #    * gresource
            #    * gtester
            #    * gtester-report
            # 3. Tools for desktop environment that cannot go to $bin due to $out depending on them ($out)
            #    * gio-launch-desktop
            ./split-dev-programs.patch
          ] ++ optional doCheck ./skip-timer-test.patch;
          
          
outputs = [ "bin" "out" "dev" "devdoc" ];
          
          
setupHook = ./setup-hook.sh;
          
          
buildInputs = [
            libelf setupHook pcre
            bash gnum4 # install glib-gettextize and m4 macros for other apps to use
          ] ++ optionals stdenv.isLinux [
            libselinux
            utillinuxMinimal # for libmount
          ] ++ optionals stdenv.isDarwin (with darwin.apple_sdk.frameworks; [

there is no excuse. Opened a pull request adding them:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/71648

jtojnar · November 4, 2019, 5:24pm

gnome3.devhelp: fix blank pages by jtojnar · Pull Request #72788 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub fixes the blank page issue.