I just want to know from you how you (or how you would) pass options to packages you develop with flakes.
I am currently writing a widget bar using Astal and then import the flake in my NixOS flake and use the package.default output in home.packages. I’d like to also style this bar according to my Stylix theme, how do you do something like this?
can you provide me with a simple example, and syntax. I have tried, but failed. I want that the astal config uses a custom colorscheme which i configure somehow that can be given as option when importing that flake in the main nixos system.
I’m afraid it’s difficult to provide a simple example as there are a bunch of moving parts.
In essence, you create a file (e.g.
module.nix
) in your package repo:Then you make sure your program reads the colors from
~/.config/my-package/colors.toml
(you can use whatever format or path you want, but adjust the module accordingly), and uses those colorsFinally, you add
homeModules.default = import ./module.nix self;
to your package flake, andimports = [ inputs.my-package.homeModules.default ]; programs.my-package.enable = true; stylix.targets.my-package.enable = true;
to your home-manager configuration. You will need to adjust a lot of stuff depending on how exactly you want to do this but this should get you started.All of this is a bit complicated but I think for a good reason; this setup is really quite flexible and will allow you to expand easily in the future should you continue work on the project. And if not, it gives you a chance to learn about a lot of different Nix concepts that will come in useful later :)
Wow, my G! This is incredibly well-structured, and I really appreciate that you even included comments. It’s genuinely helpful, and I’m definitely going to give it a try.
I actually posted this while my exams are ongoing, hoping someone would respond in the meantime. For real, thank you so much. I love this community!
@balsoft Help wanted my G!, I am stuck here I created this flake for my astal widget config: https://github.com/mobsenpai/astal.git
And I have this flake for my main nixos config: https://github.com/hana.git
I can try to import it now, but perhaps it seems that there is some error here. I try building this astal config using nix build (just to try to test it) and it creates a result folder inside the astal folder, where i have its flake and configs, see the astal repo, those are the contents of the folder. But there is no check.scss file gets created in the scss/theme/ folder. I haven’t yet tried to import it into my nixos system, for now, didn’t get the time, but will update you on that, but I feel something if not a lot of things are not good here.
How are you importing it in your nixos config? I don’t see any references to astal in there.
That sounds right,
nix build
on that flake by itself wouldn’t produce that file. You would have to import that home-manager module to your config and then switch to that config, and then the file will be created in your homedir, in~/.config/astal/scss/themes/astel.scss
to be specific.So I am importing in home manager file and the syntax and building is fine, the file is also being created in my ~/requested folder.
But I think there has been a misunderstanding in my concept of how this package is being installed and where it will get its colors from, so this flake package astal takes colors from where it is built right? and inside there will be created a scss folder which will have the themes/astel.css file, but in our setup we will only create a file in *user’s home/.config/astal directory, but then how will the app use that file? I am getting confuse here, I tried to change the astel.scss file lines to
@import "~/.config/astal/scss/themes/astel.scss";
but no cigar. I am missing a piece here, can you please help me?Sry I am asking a little too much help now.
Please consider these sources:
github.com/mobsenpai/hana
github.com/mobsenpai/aoi (just changed the name)
https://aylur.github.io/astal/guide/getting-started/nix
Your understanding is correct, you have to read that file (
~/.config/astal/scss/thmees/astel.css
) from your app somehow. I’m just guessing that@import
might be compile-time, in which case you’ll have to do it some other way, by reading this file at runtime and using it to configure the colors. If@import
is runtime itself, perhaps you need to pass the entire path instead of using~
, like@import "/home/mobsenpai/.config/astal/scss/themes/astel.scss"
or something.I don’t think there is a way to give the config during runtime or while calling the binary of the app, I will keep trying something, one thing I think that may help is creating that file during the build process, but I just don’t have enough knowledge to do that.
This is certainly an option, but I would only use it as a last resort as it means recompiling the project every time you want to change the theme. It’s quite easily done though, you can use
overrideAttrs
on the package in your home-manager module to pass in the desired colors.