Home-manager: Error installing texlive

[asymmetric]

I have programs.texlive.enable = true; in my home.nix, and this is the error I see:

❯ home-manager switch
these derivations will be built:
  /nix/store/wsbp9pxlzqyqzddspc1vsh4ba9vgq7xz-hyphens.sed.drv
  /nix/store/qw02akkc0d8rnvz3ss2waj9xpyp6b9qv-texlive-combined-2018.drv
  /nix/store/p5j5mk4zbdf30lany3s51x7cpgr45kqb-home-manager-path.drv
  /nix/store/4qv0sgxcbfdxg9xj08wyanjv0pavzylq-activation-script.drv
  /nix/store/3izil4hylcxmyxyiajjvpr61jpv9qzi6-home-manager-generation.drv
these paths will be fetched (0.01 MiB download, 0.04 MiB unpacked):
  /nix/store/8m32b8mla61cqdi0x0201a99kn28d8s8-hook
  /nix/store/9qrxkya37d0ajls3yygy0ry268p805v7-stdenv-linux
  /nix/store/zh7x10401xchzi6qsg89f69z35sv9di6-hook
copying path '/nix/store/9qrxkya37d0ajls3yygy0ry268p805v7-stdenv-linux' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
copying path '/nix/store/zh7x10401xchzi6qsg89f69z35sv9di6-hook' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
building '/nix/store/wsbp9pxlzqyqzddspc1vsh4ba9vgq7xz-hyphens.sed.drv'...
copying path '/nix/store/8m32b8mla61cqdi0x0201a99kn28d8s8-hook' from 'https://cache.nixos.org'...
building '/nix/store/qw02akkc0d8rnvz3ss2waj9xpyp6b9qv-texlive-combined-2018.drv'...
created 1 symlinks in user environment
/nix/store/bdf46hk1i9a8q85vvbi8azdbbmmzswiy-stdenv-linux/setup: line 1270: cd: /nix/store/yagm1wpl3jd2qj2mafn9sqcpkfmgc1x9-texlive-combined-2018/share/texmf/scripts/texlive: No such file or directory
builder for '/nix/store/qw02akkc0d8rnvz3ss2waj9xpyp6b9qv-texlive-combined-2018.drv' failed with exit code 1
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/p5j5mk4zbdf30lany3s51x7cpgr45kqb-home-manager-path.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/3izil4hylcxmyxyiajjvpr61jpv9qzi6-home-manager-generation.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
error: build of '/nix/store/3izil4hylcxmyxyiajjvpr61jpv9qzi6-home-manager-generation.drv' failed

And this is what's at that path:

❯ ll /nix/store/yagm1wpl3jd2qj2mafn9sqcpkfmgc1x9-texlive-combined-2018/share/texmf
Permissions Size User    Date Modified Name
lrwxrwxrwx    68 nixbld1  3 Jan 20:26  doc -> /nix/store/9i9k6ck4jgiw3kk5g6arqzk71mhi49rf-texlive-bin-2018-doc/doc

❯ nix-channel --list
home-manager https://github.com/rycee/home-manager/archive/release-18.09.tar.gz
nixos-unstable https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable

[asymmetric]

I should add that running nix-env -iA texlive.combined.scheme-basic worked.

[Jomik]

Here is my texlive setup https://github.com/Jomik/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix#L81-L96
Which works on nixos-release-18.09 and home-manager master.
I would probably suggest setting home-manager to track master, if you want to track nixos-unstable.

[asymmetric]

@Jomik I have the nixos-unstable channel only to install specific packages from unstable. The system uses 18.09, so I suppose that's what <nixpkgs> points to and Home Manager would see?

❯ echo $NIX_PATH
/home/asymmetric/.nix-defexpr/channels:nixpkgs=/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos:nixos-config=/etc/nixos/configuration.nix:/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels

[Jomik]

@asymmetric Try doing nix eval '(import <nixpkgs> { }).lib.version' in your shell as your user, that is what home-manager detects. I.e., in this case it'd be /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos I'd bet. Which is probably unstable.
For me nix eval '(import <nixpkgs> { }).lib.version' prints "18.09.1829.0396345b794".

[asymmetric]

Yeah, same version as you, which I guess is 18.09?

[Jomik]

Wanna try doing a sudo nixos-rebuild --upgrade switch followed by nix-channel --update and see if it works? Sort of assume you did that already though...
Alternatively, try to use the lines from my dotfiles. Specifically, the scheme extra package.

[asymmetric]

Ok, seems like it only works if at least something like scheme-basic is included in extraPackages.

So I'm not really sure the extraPackages name is correct, since it's actually necessary to set one of them to make TeX Live work.

[Jomik]

Thought so. You need to choose at least a scheme for the NixOS package to work. Yeah.

[asymmetric]

What do you think, would renaming the attribute to packages help clarify that they're not extra, but required?

[Jomik]

Alternatively we could have an attribute called scheme which is required.

[asymmetric]

But I imagine that there's a subset of packages that would also work, meaning that schemes are not actually required, just very convenient.

[Jomik]

Oh, I actually thought they were required to get a functioning texlive. Guess you are right though.
It makes sense to rename it packages, remove the default value (or maybe set default to [ tpkgs.scheme-small ]), and then also assert that the list is non-empty.

[rycee]

Thanks for the thorough examination! I changed the default to include collection-basic, added an assert on requiring at least one extra package, and added a test to verify that installs work with a plain programs.texlive.enable = true; configuration.