Nix package for arttime

[mimvoid]

I have been working on a Nix package for arttime. Here is the pull request to add it to nixpkgs.

I expect it to be in the review stage for some time. While the package is in a fine and usable state, any input is appreciated. Feel free to contribute suggestions or improvements for this pull request and any future updates.

[poetaman]

@mimvoid Thanks for your initiative! Few points:

• Let's test the package first in official container image/s of NixOS (I can volunteer to do that on aarch64 linux). That will make the dependencies clearer. What can end up happening otherwise is that you the user of Nix might have something preinstalled on your system, and we miss adding it to package list. For instance, the default container image doesn't have /etc/localtime and /usr/share/zoneinfo either (both are hard coded paths in arttime as well that might need replace path patch). Moreover we might have to install tzdata to get the files under /usr/share/zoneinfo. So a user who installs the package on other NixOS machine would not be able to switch time zones by pressing z followed by Tab, ....
• As a side note, do you hear desktop sounds on your DE with notification? (something we cannot test in container image).
• The license should really be some equivalent of custom or other. Please check how arttime's FreeBSD package has done it: https://www.freshports.org/deskutils/arttime/.

On other distros I am usually able to install the package file with a single command and then test if it worked. How can I do that with your NixOS package? I tried some steps by searching online, but it didn't work. Do you mind testing the package with NixOS container and seeing what I mean? If you don't have a DE or prefer another container system like podman, it would work with that as well. That will also make it easier for us to collaborate, as we will be testing in the same environment.

[poetaman]

Thanks for the update and explanation!

• There is one package that requires has a minimum version constraint: zsh should be >=5.7. When I do nix-env -iA nixpkgs.zsh, it installs zsh 5.9 in docker. Though idk if someone installs the package on an older machine then the package will be lower than 5.7? This is the only dependency that has a minimum version requirement.
• arttime has a fallback mechanism to use more if less is not found, if either is found in PATH it should work. Though for best user experience, less works best, so I would add it. Is there a switch for package manager to skip installing tools that are installed for the user or system wide?
• Ok got it, yeah users should set their own time.timeZone. If you can list the steps, I can try it with my aarch64 docker image as well.
• You can also check aarch64-linux in the Built on platform bullet of your PR, as I have tested on aarch64-linux docker.

[mimvoid]

• Since NixOS and nixpkgs are on version 25.05 at the moment, I expect arttime will be in the unstable branch, and eventually 25.11. zsh would be at least at version 5.9 in those and any future branches, so no problems there.
  • I would argue if someone were to manually install arttime with an older version of nixpkgs, that would be on them.
• I don't think there is a switch for skipping dependency installations, except for what I did for the optional dependencies like libnotify and withLibnotify. Users could do something like package.override { less = customLessPackage; }, which they can use to set less to a specific package.
  • Some packages have a extraPackages ? [ ] input that lets users add any other dependencies. Perhaps arttime can have extraPackages ? [ less ] to add less by default. Users could override it like arttime.override { extraPackages = [ pkgs.more ]; } to use more instead, or arttime.override { extraPackages = [ ]; } to not install less.
• NixOS normally has a /etc/nixos/configuration.nix file where time.timeZone is set automatically on installation.
  • The docker container does not seem to have this, nor the nixos-rebuild command. I don't think you can set it there.
  • I do have it in my NixOS configuration, however, and /etc/localtime is symlinked correctly on my system.

[poetaman]

Ok sounds good, looks like we have converged on all pending items! No need to complicate things if less is the default, we don't want to motivate users to use more anyway (for arttime's use case less is preferred over more). less on Mac takes about 640KB for entire installation size (including man pages, etc).

[poetaman]

Btw, arttime stores history in files under $HOME/.local/state/arttime/hist/. That is working well across arttime invocations in Nix docker image. Is there any Nix specific change that is needed for that path?

[mimvoid]

Btw, arttime stores history in files under $HOME/.local/state/arttime/hist/. That is working well across arttime invocations in Nix docker image. Is there any Nix specific change that is needed for that path?

No, ~/.local/state is just fine.