Neovim discrepancy between NixOS and Nix on Debian Buster

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1

This will be a question about a rather small symptom but I have many more where that comes from.

I encounter many discrepancies between using NixOS and a non-NixOS system when using the exact same derivations. While I understand some of them might as well be inevitable, I would be happy to understand where the issue stems from and what can be done in those cases.

I have 2 systems I use. One with NixOS, and the other Debian Buster.

I have the same Neovim v0.3.4 on both of them (using Nix on Buster).
Invoking nvim -c 'set titlestring=mytitle' SHOULD spawn Neovim with the title set to mytitle and it DOES so on NixOS, but DOES NOT on Buster.
Just to be sure, on Buster, I removed Neovim installed through Nix, and installed the same version v0.3.4 trough aptitude, and repeated the test, and it does work correctly like this (it it didn’t I would’ve posted this question on a Debian forum).

I will venture a guess this has to do with the setting of some environment variable, that is set on NixOS but not on Buster by default, if that is the case what would be the cleanest way of overriding the neovim derivation to create a derivation that works correctly on Debian Buster?

Thanks for the help!

2

Not sure how to help you, but FYI NixOS’ Neovim is supposed to be 0.4.3, at least on unstable.

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3

might be related to terminfo bash - How can one set a terminal's title with the 'tput' command? - Server Fault
you can check the value seen by neovim with nvim -V3 -u NONE.

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4

Sorry that was a mistake on my part. Indeed I was using latest commit of nixos-19.09 as I was delaying moving to 20.03 because of a small issue.
Although it does not solve the issue it will help people who will be confused by my post.

5

Thanks for the suggestion!
I’ll definitely try to look into that as the next step!
Will update you if I find something useful/interesting.