[Nix-dev] Java plugin for FF

[Bjørn Forsman]

On 12 October 2013 07:43, shacka <shacka at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I finally found a way to get java plugin working. Basically I had firefox
> installed using 'nix-env -i firefox', that didn't work. So I uninstalled the
> package,  added 'firefoxWrapper' to my configuration.nix and ran
> 'nixos-rebuild switch'. This time it worked! Though I wasn't able to achieve
> my initial goal - be able to use browser based VPN (Juniper Networks). But
> I'm guessing it's much harder to fix (if even possible).
>
> Few questions regarding my experience still bothering me:
> * what's the difference between installing package with 'nix-env -i' and
> adding the same package to configuration.nix?

AFAIK, there should be no difference.

> * why I can specify firefoxWrapper in configuration.nix, but can't do
> 'nix-env -i firefoxWrapper'

Nixpkgs packages can be referred to by name or attribute. "nix-env -i
package" installs the package by package name, "nix-env -iA package"
by attribute name.

Take a look here:

$ nix-env -qaP | grep firefox
nixos.pkgs.firefox13Wrapper
        firefox-13.0.1-with-plugins
nixos.pkgs.firefox
        firefox-24.0
nixos.pkgs.firefoxWrapper
        firefox-24.0-with-plugins
nixos.pkgs.firefox36Wrapper

The first column is the attribute name, the second column is the
package name. "nix-env -i firefoxWrapper" doesn't work because there
is no package *name* that matches.

You can install a package with nix-env by attribute name with -A, like this:

$ nix-env -iA nixos.pkgs.firefoxWrapper
installing `firefox-24.0-with-plugins'
building path(s) `/nix/store/n3iss8zccvlnkd3r4z3jd6b8fy0kmpxx-user-environment'
created 862 symlinks in user environment

Notice how it picked the package named "firefox-24.0-with-plugins".

IMHO, we should probably rename either the attribute or the package
name so that they are the same. That way we don't get this confusion.

Best regards,
Bjørn Forsman