lnl-overlay.nix

self: super:

{
  # Install overlay:
  # $ mkdir -p ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays
  # $ curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/LnL7/570349866bb69467d0caf5cb175faa74/raw/3f3d53fe8e8713ee321ee894ecf76edbcb0b3711/lnl-overlay.nix -o ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/lnl.nix
  userPackages = super.userPackages or {} // {

    # Example:
    hello = self.hello;
    # add more packages here...

    # Default packages:
    # cacert = self.cacert;
    # nix = self.nix;  # don't enable this on multi-user.

    nix-rebuild = super.writeScriptBin "nix-rebuild" ''
      #!${super.stdenv.shell}
      if ! command -v nix-env &>/dev/null; then
          echo "warning: nix-env was not found in PATH, add nix to userPackages" >&2
          PATH=${self.nix}/bin:$PATH
      fi
      exec nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -r -iA userPackages "$@"
    '';

  };
}

@ppenguin You can’t use dotted paths in inherit like that. You’ll have to write it like

{
  inherit (self)
        aspell
        bc
        coreutils
        gdb
    ;
  inherit (self.gnome3)
        dconf-editor
    ;
  inherit (self.xorg)
        xdpyinfo
        xev
    ;
}

@lilyball Thanks a lot, that's something I'd have figured out by myself about a few decades later 😁

does this need to be setup for every channel?

@lilyball thanks for sharing that, looks great. I'm getting an infinite recursion error when trying to use your 2020 version (The older one works fine).

nix-env -f '' -r -iA userPackages
error: infinite recursion encountered, at /home/user/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/packages.nix:4:17

Any idea what could be causing this?

@Amir-Ahmad What does your packages.nix look like?

@lilyball I was trying with this, copied from your comment https://gist.github.com/LnL7/570349866bb69467d0caf5cb175faa74#gistcomment-3372828.

self: super:
# Packages exposed as part of nixpkgs.userPackages
{
  inherit (self)
    fish tmux
    # …
    ;
}

@Amir-Ahmad Oh I think you probably put this in ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/ directly, yes? I suppose I should have elaborated. Your directory structure should look like

~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/
    userPackages/
        default.nix
        packages.nix

The nested folder name (userPackages above) doesn't matter, but the two files do need to be nested in a folder, and the main file is default.nix in this folder.

What this does is it makes userPackages/default.nix to be the actual overlay, and that in turn imports ./packages.nix to construct the userPackages set. By putting both files in the top level overlays folder you instead make them two separate overlays and the packages.nix file is then trying to overwrite each package with itself, which causes infinite recursion.

@lilyball It's working now! thanks for the explanation 👍