wrapGAppsHook and XDG_DATA_DIRS and reference to $GSETTINGS_SCHEMAS_PATH

Help
1

If I have a mkShell like this:

pkgs.mkShell {
  buildInputs = with pkgs; [
    gtk3
    glib
    gsettings-desktop-schemas
  ] ;

  nativeBuildInputs = with pkgs; [
    wrapGAppsHook
  ];

}

wrapGAppsHook will create an environment var $GSETTINGS_SCHEMAS_PATH, I can use this var inside $XDG_DATA_DIRS, like this:

  shellHook = ''
  export XDG_DATA_DIRS="$GSETTINGS_SCHEMAS_PATH"
  '';

It’s also possible to create shell env vars inside mkShell without exporting it inside the shellHook, but declaring like this:

FOO = BAR

I was thinking in not using shellHook to declare XDG_DATA_DIRS. I tried this way:

XDG_DATA_DIRS="$GSETTINGS_SCHEMAS_PATH"

But it won’t work, it’ll just declare XDG_DATA_DIRS with the string "$GSETTINGS_SCHEMAS_PATH" not with the value of $GSETTINGS_SCHEMAS_PATH. Is there a way to do that outside of shellHook? I tried with placeholder is didn’t work.

Thanks.

2

Nix will not interpolate environment variables. It cannot really interpolate them during evaluation or instantiation since they do not exist yet – the environment variables are only set when builder script is running and after it executes the relevant setup hooks.

Some tools like make might perform additional interpolations e.g. if you run make 'PREFIX=$(out)' but values passed to mkDerivation are mostly just passed to bash as they are (well if they can be stringified).

placeholders will be substituted for the corresponding output path at the beginning of the build but the feature is specific to derivation outputs and does not use environment variables. And the environment variables are not defined yet anyway.

So really if you want to do anything dynamic with the environment, you need to do it in the builder, which can only be done by using hooks. shellHook is probably okay for mkShell; in packages, you will have to use some hook that runs after the glib’s env hook.

1 Like