[Nix-dev] Discussion: env vars as glue

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 09:41:40PM +0200, Vladimír Čunát wrote:
> On 04/16/2013 05:39 PM, Lluís Batlle i Rossell wrote:
> >On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 12:28:05AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> >>Lluís Batlle i Rossell <viric at viric.name> skribis:
> >>
> >>>What uses do you have for:
> >>>ALSA_PLUGIN_DIRS
> >>>GST_PLUGIN_PATH
> >>>MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH
> >>>QTWEBKIT_PLUGIN_PATH
> >>>QT_PLUGIN_PATH
> >>>STRIGI_PLUGIN_PATH
> >>
> >>I think fundamentally plug-ins are about dynamic composition, whereas
> >>Nix favors static composition.  It’s a shock of cultures.  Yet, we
> >>probably want a bit of both.
> >
> >So is the firefox and its plugins, and we have a happy solution for that. :)
> >I propose to extend that.
> 
> +1 Exactly, by wrapping this can be done *without recompilation*.
> 
> Note: for example my pidgin refuses to start unless I clear the
> GST_PLUGINS_PATH var... perhaps some broken ABI, I don't know and I
> don't care... on NixOS we should ensure that such things can not
> happen. (It's doing this for almost two years now!)

In fact I wanted to take a look at pidgin *plugins*, how to wrap them up (I'm
using otr+skype4pidgin with manual glue). I'll take a look.