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nixpkgs-wayland

overview

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

These packages are auto-updated to the latest version available from their upstream source control. This means this overlay and package set will often contain unreleased versions.

Community chat is on Matrix: #nixpkgs-wayland:matrix.org. We are not on Libera.

Started by: @colemickens and co-maintained by @Artturin (🙏).

• overview
• Usage
  • Binary Cache
  • Continuous Integration
  • Flake Usage
  • Install for NixOS (non-flakes, manual import)
  • Install for non-NixOS users
• Packages
• Tips
  • General
  • sway
  • Nvidia Users
• 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.

Continuous Integration

We have multiple CI jobs:

1. Update - this tries to advance nixpkgs and upgrade all packages. If it can successfully build them, the updates are push to master.
2. Advance - this tries to advance nixpkgs without touching the packages. This can help show when nixpkgs upgrades via nixos-unstable has advanced into a state where we are broken building against it.
3. Build - this just proves that master was working against nixos-unstable at the point in time captured by whatever is in flake.lock on master.

We don't have CI on Pull Requests, but I keep an eye on it after merging external contributions.

Flake Usage

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

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

• Build and run waybar:

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

• Use as an overlay or package set via flakes:

  {
    inputs = {
      nixpkgs-wayland.url = "github:nix-community/nixpkgs-wayland";
  
      # only needed if you use as a package set:
      nixpkgs-wayland.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
    };
  
    outputs = inputs: {
      nixosConfigurations."my-laptop-hostname" =
      let system = "x86_64-linux";
      in nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
        inherit system;
        modules = [({pkgs, config, ... }: {
          config = {
            nix.settings = {
              # add binary caches
              trusted-public-keys = [
                "cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY="
                "nixpkgs-wayland.cachix.org-1:3lwxaILxMRkVhehr5StQprHdEo4IrE8sRho9R9HOLYA="
              ];
              substituters = [
                "https://cache.nixos.org"
                "https://nixpkgs-wayland.cachix.org"
              ];
            };
  
            # use it as an overlay
            nixpkgs.overlays = [ inputs.nixpkgs-wayland.overlay ];
  
            # or, pull specific packages (built against inputs.nixpkgs, usually `nixos-unstable`)
            environment.systemPackages = [
              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 overlay.
  url = "https://github.com/nix-community/nixpkgs-wayland/archive/${rev}.tar.gz";
  waylandOverlay = (import "${builtins.fetchTarball url}/overlay.nix");
in
  {
    nixpkgs.overlays = [ waylandOverlay ];
    environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ wayvnc ];
    # ...
  }

You could write that to a file ./wayland.nix next to your configuration.nix and then use it like so:

{ 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.

1. There are two ways to activate an overlay for just your user:

   1. Add a new entry in ``~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays.nix`:

   let
     url = "https://github.com/nix-community/nixpkgs-wayland/archive/master.tar.gz";
   in
   [
     (import "${builtins.fetchTarball url}/overlay.nix")
   ]
   

   2. Add a new file under a dir, ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/nixpkgs-wayland.nix:

   let
     url = "https://github.com/nix-community/nixpkgs-wayland/archive/master.tar.gz";
   in
     (import "${builtins.fetchTarball url}/overlay.nix")
   

Note, this method does not pin nixpkgs-wayland. That's left to the reader. (Just use flakes...)

2. Then, nix-env will have access to the packages:

nix-env -iA neatvnc

Packages

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.

Nvidia Users

• Everything should just work now (aka, wlroots/sway don't need patching).
• This is a known-good working config, at least at one point in time: mixins/nvidia.nix@ccd992

Development Guide

• Use nix develop
• ./main.nu:
  • ./main.nu build - builds and caches derivations that don't exist in the cache, use nix-eval-jobs
  • ./main.nu advance - advances the flake inputs, runs main build
  • ./main.nu update - advances the flake inputs, updates pkg revs, runs main build
• build pushes to the nixpkgs-wayland cachix

If for some reason the overlay isn't progressing and you want to help, just clone the repo, run nix develop -c ./main.nu update