Here's what happened:
My `emacs.glinux` derivation relies on gLinux `/usr/bin/emacs`, and Google
recently published version 27, so all corporate machines (i.e. this laptop)
switched from Emacs 26 to Emacs 27 overnight.
However, my Nix derivation was building all of the packages for Emacs 26, so
some packages were compatible while others weren't.
The Elisp package, `emr`, doesn't build for version 27, so I dropped it
altogether.
I'm starting to prefer the `inherit (builtins) path` pattern in my Nix
expressions. I know this is idiomatic, so even if I don't like it, I am trying
to learn to like it.
These were hard-coded as $HOME/BRIEFCASE, which won't work in CI, since CI runs
as the user buildkite-agent-socrates, whose $HOME directory doesn't exist.
TL;DR:
- Define runEmacsScript to emacs/default.nix for ci/pipelines/post-receive
- Write script.el to call (load init.el) and catch any errors
- Lint Elisp with gonewest818/elisp-lint
Also nice how Buildkite supports :gnu: emojis!
- Prefer prepending wpcDir, vendorDir to EMACSLOADPATH instead of using the
--directory flag
- Remove --load ${wpcPackageEl} because init.el calls (require 'wpc-package)
- Surround $@ in 2x-quotes
Following the advice of Domen's nix.dev anti-patterns, I'm preferring something
like...
```nix
builtins.path { path = /path/to/some.where; name = "some.where"; }
```
...to
```nix
/path/to/some/where
```
While the former is more verbose, it will fail to build when the path doesn't
exist, which I prefer.
While debugging some broken Emacs config, I ran Emacs in X, where for some
reason my PATH doesn't have my nix-env dependencies... because of this, when I
call `~/.nix-profile/bin/wpcarros-emacs` to start my Emacs, I saw warnings about
missing packages that I hadn't seen before. Nice!
After growing frustrated with doom-modeline's compatibility with my EXWM setup,
I decided to borrow @tazjin's setup, which I find to be much more appealing.
When I run `nix-env -f '<briefcase>' -iA emacs`, Nix builds a derivation of
wpcarros-emacs using the path to the Emacs derivation. This doesn't work well on
glinux and causes strange behavior. For instance, Chrome crashes when it tries
to browse for files. Building with `nix-env -iA emacs.glinux` fixes this and
other problems.
Miscellaneous other changes:
- Remove unnecessary fix-point recursion
- Drop support for unused dottime.el
- Remove unused overrideEmacs
- Remove unused withLocalConfig
- Support emacs.glinux and emacs.nixos alternative derivations
Support commonly used programs like fd, exa, bat, etc.
For now, I'm unsure how to manage the programs in my emacs/default.nix with my
home.nix. I'll wait until I have a stronger opinion to handle this.
I'm not sure if this commit breaks everything in my monorepo. I think it
will.
Why am I doing this? Perhaps it's a bad idea. I don't fully understand how
readTree works. My ignorance is costing me hours of time spent debugging. In an
effort to better understand readTree, I'm removing the default values for my Nix
expression parameters, which I believe have preventing errors from surfacing.
I enjoyed using term-switcher so much that I ended up adopting vterm as my
primary terminal. After reaching for vterm as often as I did, I realized that I
would enjoy supporting cycling through instances, creating new instances,
deleting existing instances, renaming instances. Thus spawned vterm-mgt.el.
I'm particularly excited about the KBD to toggle between vterm instances and
source code buffers.
I removed most of the packages that I install with `nix-env`. You can view these
with `nix-env --query`. This is one small step in a grander project to migrate
entirely to a declarative config managed by Nix.
I'm in the midst of transitioning onto a few new tools.
My previous workflow just used `nix-env` to install *some* packages. I didn't
have a prescribed methodology for which packages I would install using `nix-env`
and which ones I would install using `sudo apt-get install`. Sometimes if a
package would be available in my aptitude repositories, I'd use that; other
times when it wasn't available I'd use `nix-env`. One complication about being
on gLinux intead of NixOS is that some packages (e.g. nixpkgs.terminator) is
available via `nix-env -iA nixpkgs.terminator`, but the installation won't
actually run on my gLinux. In these instances, I would install terminator from
the aptitude repositories.
Then @tazjin introduced me to his Emacs configuration that he builds using
Nix. What appealed to me about his built Emacs is that it worked as expected on
either a NixOS machine and on gLinux (and presumably on other non-NixOS machines
as well).
A setup towards which I'm working is to own one or a few NixOS machines whose
configurations are entirely managed with Nix. On devices like my work machines,
which cannot run NixOS, I can build as much of the software that I need using
Nix and attempt to minimize the ad hoc configuration either with shell scripts,
python, golang, or more Nix code... it's clear that I still don't have a clear
idea of how that part will work.
For now, I'm adopting nix, nix-env, lorri, direnv, and weening off of aptitude
as much as I can. Things are a bit messy, but my general trend feels
positive. Stay tuned for more updates.
- Prefer goimports to gofmt. goimports calls gofmt; it also adds and removes
dependencies.
- Assert the presence of goimports, godoc, godef
- KBD godef to M-.
- Support the M-x compile command for calling `go build -v`
I'm using a Makefile until I can remember the command:
```shell
> nix-env -f . -i
```
This will install (i.e. `-i`) any derivations instantiated from the Nix
expression resolvable by `-f`. Ideally the incantation will look something like
this:
```shell
> nix-env -f '<universe>' -iA emacs
```
Informing `nix-env` to install all of the derivations created by the expression
at attribute `emacs` in my `<universe>` repository. For now two things are
preventing this:
1. `emacs` isn't an attribute in my top-level expression defined in the
`default.nix`.
2. If I do add `emacs` as an attribute and call the above command, my usage of
`readTree` results in `pkgs` missing `.lib` and a few other stdlib commands
that are available in `(import <nixpkgs> {})`.
A fix for both of these should be forthcoming.
