Injecting environment variables

[tymscar]

Could it be possible to inject environment variables, such as $PATH, into the applications? I am asking because certain applications, such as IntelliJ, cannot locate binaries from Nix, such as git-lfs, if not launched through a terminal that already has the environment variables set.

Given that this project already performs some magical operations for the applications installed through the home manager, I thought there might be a way to achieve this.

Thank you.

[hraban]

Interesting question! I never really considered this, because I use emacs and exec-path-from-shell, but it seems like a valid use case for generic apps.

For single binaries, that's very easy: pkgs.make(Binary)Wrapper

For application launchers it's a different game. I found "https://superuser.com/a/541068/442895", and t turns out there's already exactly one package that does something with that in nixpkgs :) xquartz. Having a more generic tool for that, à la makeWrapper, might actually be quite nice.

What kind of API did you have in mind?

Full disclosure I don't need this myself so it's very low priority for me. But if you have a design plan and want to submit a PR I'm all 👂

[bestlem]

For examples elsewhere.

Hombrew emacs-plus injects $PATH into Info.plist https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus/blob/master/Library/EmacsBase.rb Note the Homebrew Macport version does not.

Macports version of emacs-plus https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/blob/master/editors/emacs/files/patch-Info.plist.in.diff does as well . Macports version of Macport seems to do this by patching C code!

The Macports version seems to be the one to copy as it is a simple text change whilst Homebrew (and the Quartz nixpkgs mentioned above) uses PlistBuddy which I doubt is in nixpkgs.

[bestlem]

Searching nixpkgs for Info.plist I think there is another example RawTherapee but this is because upstream sets a lot of environment variables to /Applications

But that does suggest a general purpose fix might be difficult if LSEnvironment is in upstream code. I think general code would have to parse the Plist file and overnight or add is necessary. If LSEnvironment is not set upstream then should be more easily doable.

[hraban]

If I ever needthis myself I'll add it 👍 . In the mean time if you need it and feel like submitting a PR , I'm happy to review !

[hraban]

I'm closing this issue while awaiting a PR , but feel free to continue discussing here if you want to bounce ideas around

[tymscar]

Thanks both of you. I will look into the suggestions in the meantime!

[hraban]

Reopened and migrated to discussion. I think I finally understand the point of this github feature now :)