nixpkgs-wayland

^{(note: failure indicates auto-updates are stuck and need intervention. all packages remain buildable on tip of master)}

Automated, pre-built packages for Wayland (sway/wlroots) tools for NixOS (nixos-unstable channel).

Community chat is on Matrix: #nixpkgs-wayland:matrix.org. Alternatively #nixpkgs-wayland on freenode is plumbed into the Matrix room.

• Usage
  • Binary Cache
  • Flake Usage
  • Install for NixOS (non-flakes, manual import)
  • Install for non-NixOS users
• Packages
• Tips
  • General
  • sway
• Development Guide

Usage

Binary Cache

The Cachix landing page for nixpkgs-wayland shows how to utilize the binary cache.

Packages from this overlay are regularly built against nixos-unstable and pushed to this cache.

Flake Usage

• Build and run the Wayland-fixed up version of OBS-Studio:

  nix shell "github:colemickens/nixpkgs-wayland#obs-studio" --command obs
  

• Build and run waybar:

  nix run "github:colemickens/nixpkgs-wayland#waybar"
  

• Use as an overlay or package set via flakes:

  {
    # ...
    inputs = {
      # ...
      nixpkgs-wayland  = { url = "github:colemickens/nixpkgs-wayland"; };
  
      # only needed if you use as a package set:
      nixpkgs-wayland.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "cmpkgs";
      nixpkgs-wayland.inputs.master.follows = "master";
    };
  
    outputs = inputs: {
      nixosConfigurations."my-laptop-hostname" =
      let system = "x86_64-linux";
      in nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
        inherit system;
        modules = [({pkgs, config, ... }: {
          config = {
            nix = {
              # add binary caches
              binaryCachePublicKeys = [
                "cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY="
                "nixpkgs-wayland.cachix.org-1:3lwxaILxMRkVhehr5StQprHdEo4IrE8sRho9R9HOLYA="
                # ...
              ];
              binaryCaches = [
                "https://cache.nixos.org"
                "https://nixpkgs-wayland.cachix.org"
                # ...
              ];
            };
  
            # use it as an overlay
            nixpkgs.overlays = [ inputs.nixpkgs-wayland.overlay ];
  
            # pull specific packages (built against inputs.nixpkgs, usually `nixos-unstable`)
            environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
              inputs.nixpkgs-wayland.packages.${system}.waybar
            ];
          };
        })];
      };
    };
  }
  

Install for NixOS (non-flakes, manual import)

If you are not using Flakes, then consult the NixOS Wiki page on Overlays. Also, you can expand this section for a more literal, direct example. If you do pin, use a tool like niv to do the pinning so that you don't forget and wind up stuck on an old version.

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
let
  rev = "master";
  # 'rev' could be a git rev, to pin the overla.
  # if you pin, you should use a tool like `niv` maybe, but please consider trying flakes
  url = "https://github.com/colemickens/nixpkgs-wayland/archive/${rev}.tar.gz";
  waylandOverlay = (import (builtins.fetchTarball url));
in
  {
    nixpkgs.overlays = [ waylandOverlay ];
    environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ wayvnc ];
    # ...
  }

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
  {
    # ...
    imports = [
      # ...
      ./wayland.nix
    ];
  }

Install for non-NixOS users

Non-NixOS users have many options, but here are two explicitly:

1. Activate flakes mode, then just run them outright like the first example in this README.

2. See the following details block for an example of how to add nixpkgs-wayland as a user-level overlay and then install a package with nix-env.

nix-env -iA neatvnc

Packages

These packages were mostly recently built (and cached) against:

Tips

General

• I recommend using home-manager!
• It has modules and options for:
  • sway
  • waybar
  • obs and plugins!
  • more!

sway

• You will likely want a default config file to place at $HOME/.config/sway/config. You can use the upstream default as a starting point: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/blob/master/config.in
• If you start sway from a raw TTY, make sure you use exec sway so that if sway crashes, an unlocked TTY is not exposed.

Development Guide

• Use nix-direnv (or if you can't, nix develop, (or if you can't, nix-shell)).
• ./update.sh:
  • updates flake inputs
  • updates pkgs/<pkg>/metadata.nix with the latest commit+hash for each package
  • calls nix-build-uncached ... packages.nix to build uncached packages (see: nix-build-uncached)
  • pushes to "nixpkgs-wayland" on cachix

If for some reason the overlay isn't progressing and you want to help, just clone the repo, run nix-shell --command ./update.sh and start fixing issues in the package definitions. Sometimes you might need to edit default.nix to change the version of wlroots a certain package uses.