[Nix-dev] NixOS: Graphical User Interface

[Nicolas Pierron]

Hi NixOS users,

I don't know how many of you ever encounter the directory named gui in
the source tree of NixOS ...  So I am pleased to announce the first
graphical tool (at least introduced on this mailing list) to watch for
NixOS options.

http://nbp.name/img/nixos-gui.png

The current usage of this tool is to explore options, and see the
current value, the default value, the example, the description, where
the option is declared and where it is defined.  It is based on
nixos-option tool which fetch the information out of NixOS
configurations and output a XML which is then interpreted by nixos-gui
to display the option tree.  It load options in a lazy fashion
otherwise loading all options would take too much time and resources
to make it usable.

This tool does not much and does not compete with command line tools
yet, but I am confident that it will inspire many persons.  It is a
xulrunner application, which means that it is developed in Javascript
& HTML & CSS, which make this tool extensible by many persons.

Many goals are possible for this tool:
- Improve the option panel.
- Search function to look for option quickly.
- Pretty-print description fields to escape <option> and <filename> blocks.
- Make an edit option to modify the content of $NIXOS_CONFIG.
- Analyzed and report which options are modified when one is changed.

I am sure you may have many other idea for making this tool nicer and
more useful.

Feel free to share and to contribute ;)

-- 
Nicolas Pierron
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasbpierron - http://nbp.name/