Error while writing hyprland config

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1

Hi there! I’m having issues setting up hyprland with nixos via home-manager. Any help appreciated!

All files are stored in /etc/nixos

Basically, I’m having a (system managed) home configuration

Home-Configuraiton (hyprland.nix)

{config, pkgs, ... }: 
{
  wayland.windowManager.hyprland = {
    enable = true;
    package = pkgs.hyprland;
    xwayland.enable = true;

    systemd.enable = true;
    settings = {
      input = {
        kb_layout = "de";
      };
    };
  };
}

which will be imported in my home-manager.nix configuration

Home-Configuraiton (home-manager.nix)

{ config, lib, pkgs, jsonConfig, ... }:
let
	home-manager-src = builtins.fetchTarball "https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-${jsonConfig.system.version}.tar.gz";
	home-manager = import home-manager-src { inherit pkgs; };
	hyprlandConfig = import ./home/hyprland.nix { inherit config lib pkgs; };
in
{
	imports = [
		(import "${home-manager-src}/nixos")
	];

	# Enable the home-manager command globally
	home-manager.useGlobalPkgs = true;
	home-manager.useUserPackages = true;
	home-manager.backupFileExtension = "backup";

	# Add home-manager binary to the system-wide environment
	environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
		home-manager.home-manager
	];
	

	# Configure home manager for the user
	home-manager.users.${jsonConfig.user.username} = {
		home.username = jsonConfig.user.username;
		home.homeDirectory = "/home/${jsonConfig.user.username}";
		home.stateVersion = jsonConfig.system.version;

		...

		imports = [
			...
			hyprlandConfig
		];

	};
}

which is part of my configuration.nix

System Configuration (configuration.nix)

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

let
	configFile = ./config.json;
	jsonConfig = builtins.fromJSON (builtins.readFile configFile);
in
{
	imports = [
		(import ./home-manager.nix { inherit config lib pkgs jsonConfig; })
		...
	]
	nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;
	system.stateVersion = jsonConfig.system.version;
}

Everytime, ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf will be written, journalctrl shows the following error

Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Creating home file links in /home/<user>
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Activating onFilesChange
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188426]: jq: parse error: Unmatched ']' at line 2, column 1
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Activating reloadSystemd

thus the systemd service fails to start

systemctl status home-manager-<user>.service
● home-manager-<user>.service - Home Manager environment for <user>
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/home-manager-<user>.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Mon 2024-08-19 20:10:56 CEST; 8min ago
    Process: 188251 ExecStart=/nix/store/8yp9zb8805nl91dpdzips42gx8v0v116-hm-setup-env /nix/store/c500ab1qxdf6gbvfmpnf9qfkqmsq22dm-home-manager-generation (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 188251 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
         IP: 0B in, 0B out
        CPU: 424ms

Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Activating writeBoundary
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Activating installPackages
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Activating linkGeneration
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Cleaning up orphan links from /home/<user>
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Creating profile generation 52
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Creating home file links in /home/<user>
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Activating onFilesChange
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188426]: jq: parse error: Unmatched ']' at line 2, column 1
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower hm-activate-<user>[188251]: Activating reloadSystemd
Aug 19 20:10:56 PowerTower systemd[1]: Finished Home Manager environment for <user>.

I do not use jq activily for anything, thus I don’t know where this error comes from, how to find out or how to fix it.

The only json related part in my config as that I’m using a file “config.json” as input to configure the username, email, hostname, keys and wheter or not to install some packages to easily manage multiple different setups. I could already rule this out as a potential cause.

Basically, i tried to follow this guide on how to configure hyprland Hyprland - NixOS Wiki

Also, even tough running sudo nixos-rebuild switch triggers the issue the command it self exits normally.

2

Is the first code block what’s imported in this line?

3

Yes, I’m trying to update my question for better clarification

4

At this point I would dig through home-manager source code for that onFilesChange thing to see where it uses jq.

5

Isn’t there some way to get more information out of hm-activate? I tried do run nixos-rebuild verbose or with trace but no additional info about that activation process has been printed.

6

Don’t be afraid to dig through the source like I suggested.

7

I did,

It seems like the home manager at some point executes
/nix/store/vyws1n659vxcqzliagdaxmb7bjlg4iy8-home-manager-generation/activate

which has the lines

324-  if [[ -d "/tmp/hypr" || -d "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/hypr" ]]; then
325-    for i in $(/nix/store/f6v5nm08sz8bsvb87696yj7g7n39dw96-hyprland-0.41.2/bin/hyprctl instances -j | jq ".[].instance" -r); do
326-      /nix/store/f6v5nm08sz8bsvb87696yj7g7n39dw96-hyprland-0.41.2/bin/hyprctl -i "$i" reload config-only
327-    done
328-  fi

Testing some examples with this expression shows:

  • echo '[{ "instance": "1" }, { "instance": "2" }]' | jq ".[].instance" -r succeeds
  • echo ']' | jq ".[].instance" -r triggers the same issue

This could imply that running hyprctl (/nix/store/f6v5nm08sz8bsvb87696yj7g7n39dw96-hyprland-0.41.2/bin/hyprctl instances -j) sends an invalid json. Unfortunately, i cannot run it directly because i need to emulate the environment around the activation process …