Missing documentation of makeAutostartItem

olaf · July 21, 2022, 12:03pm

Looking at https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/0417e8e11fcd58dc571f045c51bbad50d0cf438e/nixos/tests/gnome.nix I found the use of makeAutostartItem. I don’t find any documentation mention the function. I don’t even find its implementation. If it would be documented where should this be?

nixinator · July 21, 2022, 2:38pm

funny enough here is a blast from the past

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/13602#issuecomment-213891558

that mentioned the fact it appears, but the relevant documentation was never added.

it’s definition can be found in all-packages.nix.

github.com

NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/e3a3abe560a143dde4b77176575d02ff32ffebcb/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix

/* The top-level package collection of nixpkgs.
 * It is sorted by categories corresponding to the folder names in the /pkgs
 * folder. Inside the categories packages are roughly sorted by alphabet, but
 * strict sorting has been long lost due to merges. Please use the full-text
 * search of your editor. ;)
 * Hint: ### starts category names.
 */
{ lib, noSysDirs, config, overlays }:
res: pkgs: super:

with pkgs;

{
  # A module system style type tag
  #
  # Allows the nixpkgs fixpoint, usually known as `pkgs`
  # to be distinguished nominally.
  #
  #     pkgs._type == "pkgs"
  #     pkgs.pkgsStatic._type == "pkgs"

This file has been truncated. show original

 makeAutostartItem = callPackage ../build-support/make-startupitem { };

which leads you to.

it’s not a derivation that can be built in it’s own right… i’ve not seen that pattern before, especially used in connection with environment.systemPackages , but now you have the definition. Top level redirection/aliases can catch you out if your new to nixpkgs.

as for documentation , it should be in https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/doc

I think that some nixers think that very small functions like this , isn’t worth documentation for, because you just hunt for an example when you need it.

good first issue for someone

olaf · July 21, 2022, 4:04pm

thanks.
I see all-packages.nix is too big to be searched by github. What is the purpose of this file? (I mean what is the design choice to put so much information into one file?)

nixinator · July 21, 2022, 5:52pm

try Sourcegraph , it will give you more joy searching for things!!!

or get a local checkout of nixpkgs via git and use something like ripgrep!! … it’s fast!

It’s big, because nixpkgs is sometimes a victim of it’s own success and has scaling problems in every way you could think of.

However some very talented nixers fight against these scaling problems.

a curse of having a lot of packages in the repo!!!

Mathnerd314 · July 21, 2022, 9:04pm

Well, there’s no technical reason it couldn’t be split, e.g. into all-packages-a-to-m.nix and all-packages-n-to-z.nix. Some package sets are already split out, like Python, Haskell, etc. But most development happens locally so the failure of Github search is not too inconvenient. But perhaps it should be noted somewhere.