[Nix-dev] Re: User environment hooks

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

ludo at gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> "Andres Loeh" <andres.loeh at googlemail.com>
> writes:
>
>> Well, there are not so many issues that are global like info pages.
>> Local modifications (such as TeXLive) can easily be handled locally,
>> i.e., the builder doesn't have to be changed completely, we just have
>> to compose TeXLive with its packages as the current solution does.
>
> One other (possible) example is GStreamer plug-ins, or Firefox/IceCat
> plug-ins, for that matter.  The latter is currently handled via
> `wrapFirefox', we could imagine leveraging hooks to deal with that, so
> that one can just "nix-env -i mplayerplug-in" and it will just DTRT.
>
> Another example is fonts.  Debian has a tool called Defoma, which
> notifies application packages when fonts are installed.  So suppose you
> have, say, gv and LaTeX installed, they want to know about new fonts
> that get installed so that they can use them.

More frequent examples are applications that rely on external programs
for some actions.  For instance, what the mail client (e.g., Gnus) or
web browser (e.g., IceCat) is able to do when the user selects an
`application/pdf' MIME object depends on which applications are
installed in the user environment.

On distros with system-wide installations (e.g., Debian), "apt-get
install evince" somehow registers Evince for the `application/pdf' MIME
type so that applications automatically launch it when they encounter
such a MIME object.

Thanks,
Ludo'.