Home-manager: On unstable channel, home manager can't be built anymore because of manual combined

Created on 8 Sep 2020 · 34Comments · Source: nix-community/home-manager

Issue description

Updating the latest unstable channel, home manager doesn't build anymore. Here are the logs

trace: types.loaOf has been removed and mixing lists with attribute values
is no longer possible; please use types.attrsOf instead.
See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/1800 for the motivation.

these derivations will be built:
/nix/store/0v2pwmpjm3rfdn1imzffp6c30dx4hfvm-manual-combined.drv
/nix/store/0xkiy24j3xc5xvzshg57g6fmjhvp7sxf-manual-olinkdb.drv
/nix/store/hzxx7qscdim6w2jc7zlids0ld6jdj2d4-man-pages.drv
/nix/store/45p3nxvj23xwngdf9frdlh1mf78xvyky-man-pages-fish-completions.drv
/nix/store/wb5xpsliz02ibmvhjwym5m0xb4cn0gvw-neovim-0.4.4.drv
/nix/store/dzfzms49h83dvxb3vqgjdvsji4r7j49d-neovim-0.4.4-fish-completions.drv
/nix/store/4w950gn1myfj8rgibm7xgiaqwxggfjf2-raphael-fish-completions.drv
/nix/store/rhv7yvk8ffsdq4pxp7yvfj21asa5i229-home-manager-path.drv
/nix/store/vdd7pp9vjnh10bz5immhayivf4pkcj0d-activation-script.drv
/nix/store/y631s1jz0z1f52y3hypqpcw3w7gsmsy5-home-manager-files.drv
/nix/store/xbahw25n43gy42w0qm9agc8v2f81m66d-home-manager-generation.drv
building '/nix/store/wb5xpsliz02ibmvhjwym5m0xb4cn0gvw-neovim-0.4.4.drv'...
building '/nix/store/0v2pwmpjm3rfdn1imzffp6c30dx4hfvm-manual-combined.drv'...
Generating remote plugin manifest

/nix/store/d4gdyn7qk2v83l17ay7qnarbrydf6q8g-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml:9206: element xref: validity error : IDREF attribute linkend references an unknown ID "opt-home.file._name__.source"
9202 This release has the following notable changes:
9203
9204
9205
9206 The option now allows source files to be
9207 hidden, that is, having a name starting with the . character. It
9208 also allows the source file name to contain characters not typically

/nix/store/d4gdyn7qk2v83l17ay7qnarbrydf6q8g-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml fails to validate
builder for '/nix/store/0v2pwmpjm3rfdn1imzffp6c30dx4hfvm-manual-combined.drv' failed with exit code 3
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/hzxx7qscdim6w2jc7zlids0ld6jdj2d4-man-pages.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/rhv7yvk8ffsdq4pxp7yvfj21asa5i229-home-manager-path.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/45p3nxvj23xwngdf9frdlh1mf78xvyky-man-pages-fish-completions.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/xbahw25n43gy42w0qm9agc8v2f81m66d-home-manager-generation.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
error: build of '/nix/store/xbahw25n43gy42w0qm9agc8v2f81m66d-home-manager-generation.drv' failed

Most helpful comment

If you're using home-manager from master, you probably need to update your home-manager channel. The commit I made actually fixed this issue.

cole-h on 8 Sep 2020

👍6

All 34 comments

If you're using home-manager from master, you probably need to update your home-manager channel. The commit I made actually fixed this issue.

cole-h on 8 Sep 2020

👍6

I also tried to update the channel, but cannot have this solved.
Is it only a matter of nix-channel --update home-manager? Maybe there is a cache somewhere that needs to be flushed?

real34 on 8 Sep 2020

I guess it's a matter of updating the version on nixpkg right?
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/blob/nixos-unstable/pkgs/tools/package-management/home-manager/default.nix#L14

happysalada on 8 Sep 2020

@real34 Depends. If your home-manager channel is on your user, then $ nix-channel --update home-manager should be all that's needed (you can check by running $ nix-channel --list -- if home-manager shows up, it's a user channel). If the channel is on the root user, then you'll need elevated permissions to update it: $ sudo nix-channel --update home-manager.

@happysalada If you're running nixos-unstable, I would recommend using home-manager's master branch as a channel (or through some other method). As you can see by the version (2020-03-17), the home-manager package doesn't get updated often.

cole-h on 8 Sep 2020

@cole-h Thanks for the confirmation!
I think there is still something wrong then:

real34 on 8 Sep 2020

@real34 Assuming your dotfiles haven't changed much, I think the problem lies here: https://github.com/real34/dotfiles/blob/23885123e0699d9b13f4771c2b55d777df899e44/home.nix#L136-L139. You're using home-manager from 19.09, which still has loaOf (even 20.03 does).

Feel free to correct me if it's changed and you just haven't pushed anything, but that's what would make the most sense to me.

cole-h on 8 Sep 2020

Sorry for the noob question here.
My channel is set to master
home-manager https://github.com/rycee/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz from the output of channel list.
However since I am using nix darwin, I think the version of home manager that is being used is the one on stable. I tried using nixUnstable for the channel used for nix-darwin. I don't know how to set up a specific channel for a package. I couldn't find documentation on that.

To install nur, I have had to do something like that

  nixpkgs.config = {
    allowUnfree = true;
    packageOverrides = pkgs: {
      nur = import (builtins.fetchTarball {
        url = "https://github.com/nix-community/NUR/archive/master.tar.gz";
        sha256 = "1c3rh7x8bql2m9xcn3kvdqng75lzzf6kpxb3m6knffyir0jcrfrh";
      }) {
        inherit pkgs;
      };
    };
  };

Perhaps it's something similar?

happysalada on 9 Sep 2020

When will you add a release-20.09 branch?

davidak on 9 Sep 2020

I've been hitting something similar (?) as well in the past couple of days:

builder for '/nix/store/4wa1ljsj6s2fi5fmiclr5z5vsykr7ma5-manual-combined.drv' failed with exit code 3; last 10 log lines:
  /nix/store/8h7hm3jqhkkmv0wg48w32hv01chbp3ic-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml:11861: element link: validity error : IDREF attribute linkend references an unknown ID "opt-home.file._name__.source"
   11857              &lt;name&gt;
   11858         </literal></para><para><emphasis>Declared by:</emphasis></para><simplelist><member><filename xlink:href="https://github.com/rycee/home-manager/blob/master/modules/misc/xdg.nix#blob-path">
   11859                          &lt;home-manager/modules/misc/xdg.nix&gt;
   11860                  </filename></member></simplelist></listitem></varlistentry><varlistentry><term xlink:href="#opt-xdg.dataFile._name_.text" xml:id="opt-xdg.dataFile._name_.text"><option>xdg.dataFile.&lt;name&gt;.text</option></term><listitem><para>Text of the file. If this option is null then
   11861    <link linkend="opt-home.file._name__.source">home.file.&lt;name?&gt;.source</link>
   11862     must be set.
   11863   </para><para><emphasis>Type:</emphasis> null or strings concatenated with "\n"</para><para><emphasis>Default:</emphasis> <literal>

  /nix/store/8h7hm3jqhkkmv0wg48w32hv01chbp3ic-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml fails to validate

jpotier on 9 Sep 2020

@davidak Considering the 20.09 beta hasn't officially begun yet, I feel like creating that branch would be slightly premature. However, consider opening another issue asking this same question (just so we don't derail this one)?

@happysalada Unfortunately, I'm totally unfamiliar with the darwin story for h-m and nixpkgs...

@jpotier Yep, that's the issue that was fixed (or should have been; you guys are making me doubt myself now...) by https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/pull/1473.

Could anybody still having problems after updating their home-manager channel try one of the following things:

"reinstall" home-manager by running nix-shell '<home-manager>' -A install (this should only create a new generation)
use a local checkout of home-manager by cloning this repo and setting programs.home-manager.path = "..."; (and then home-manager switching)

and report back with what did or didn't work?

cole-h on 9 Sep 2020

using the nix-shell command you suggested, everything worked fine.

I'm going to research on nix darwin and report if I find a solution.

happysalada on 10 Sep 2020

It looks like a PR has already been merged on nixpkgs
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/97448

It's a matter of a couple of days before, nixpkgs unstable gets updated I think.

happysalada on 10 Sep 2020

👍1

I run home-manager as part of my system configuration, ie:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
  imports = [
    <home-manager/nixos>
  ];

  home-manager.users.jpotier = {

    home = {
      packages = with pkgs; [
        wget
      ];
    };

}

I'm currently at commit 249650a07e of home-manager (https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager) from master branch.

Running install… Well, broke my user environment (because I don't have a home.nix in a well known place, maybe?) I had to restart my home-manager-jpotier.service to get my user environment back.

Full system nixos-rebuild test still chokes on the same problem after that.

I don't have the change that @happysalada mentionned in my local nixpkgs, so let's see in a few days if that fixes anything.

jpotier on 10 Sep 2020

For those that still have issues, please run

$ nix run nixpkgs.nix-info --command nix-info ; nix eval '(<home-manager>)'

hopefully you'll find an old Home Manager package there.

rycee on 10 Sep 2020

digging a little further, it looks like one of the checks on the nixpkgs PR hasn't completed, the ofBorg one.
It looks like ofBorg has a lot of darwin builds waiting
https://monitoring.nix.ci/d/000000002/ofborg?orgId=1&refresh=10s
I opened an issue for it
https://github.com/NixOS/ofborg/issues/529
(if nixpkgs is waiting for all the checks to complete before releasing on unstable branch, then this would need to get resolved before it gets deployed)

happysalada on 11 Sep 2020

@rycee Here the output I get running your command

error: --- UsageError -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nix
unrecognised flag '--command'
Try 'nix --help' for more information.
error: --- Error ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nix
experimental Nix feature 'nix-command' is disabled; use '--experimental-features nix-command' to override

I've tried adding --experimental-features nix-command at the end, but then I still get the first error and then I get this one

error: --- BadURL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ nix
'(<home-manager>)' is not a valid URL

happysalada on 11 Sep 2020

The first command should be nix shell nixpkgs#nix-info --command nix-info (this changed recently-ish), and the second command should be nix eval --expr '<nixpkgs>' (parentheses optional) -- might need to add --impure before --expr if Nix complains.

cole-h on 11 Sep 2020

Thanks for taking the time to help!

running the first command I get

error: --- Error ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nix
experimental Nix feature 'nix-command' is disabled; use '--experimental-features nix-command' to override

trying to fix it with

nix shell --experimental-features nix-command nixpkgs#nix-info --command nix-info

I get then

error: --- Error ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nix
experimental Nix feature 'flakes' is disabled; use '--experimental-features flakes' to override

I can't fix this one despite adding the experimental-features flag.

happysalada on 11 Sep 2020

Let's try without requiring nixUnstable:

$ nix-shell -p nix-info --run "nix-info"
$ nix-instantiate --eval --expr '<home-manager>'

(Note: I made a typo in my above message -- should have been <home-manager>, not <nixpkgs>)

cole-h on 11 Sep 2020

Thanks for the help. Both command work. This is the output I get

system: "x86_64-darwin", multi-user?: no, version: nix-env (Nix) 3.0pre20200829_f156513, channels(raphael): "darwin, home-manager, nixpkgs-20.09pre242495.3c0e3697520, nixpkgs-unstable-20.09pre242495.3c0e3697520", nixpkgs: /Users/raphael/.nix-defexpr/channels/nixpkgs

and

/Users/raphael/.nix-defexpr/channels/home-manager

happysalada on 11 Sep 2020

@happysalada And does

$ grep -R loaOf /Users/raphael/.nix-defexpr/channels/home-manager/

print anything? Also

$ grep 'for path' $(which home-manager)

rycee on 11 Sep 2020

my home-manager is coming from nix-darwin. so that is the path that I get when I run which home-manager
/run/current-system/sw/bin/home-manager

indeed running your second grep gives me
for path in "/nix/store/piwpn4w7x1l5mgw5qf0gjmhvr0lzrxia-source"

I definitely thing that the home manager version is old, since nix-darwin is set to use the nixpkgs-unstable channel, no doubt about that. I'll try again in a few days when the channel has been updated

Thanks again for all the help!

happysalada on 11 Sep 2020

I'll close this meanwhile.

rycee on 11 Sep 2020

I'm having trouble getting this to work on the bqv-flakes branch. I've tried updating the nixpkgs input and rebasing on master to incorporate the latest changes, but still the same error.

matthuszagh on 13 Sep 2020

Just FYI, flakes are now on master. bqv-flakes is unnecessary.

cole-h on 13 Sep 2020

👍1

For me, running home-manager as a NixOS module, I had to run sudo nix-channel --update home-manager. The channel seems to be on _both_ root and my normal user. Running the channel update as my normal user went through, but did not solve the problem.

austinbutler on 14 Sep 2020

@austinbutler can you check that you have the unstable channel in your packages?

I can confirm that on sunday updating the channel and with the unstable version of nixpkgs it all works.
(even though for some weird reason, searh.nixos.org still displays the old version https://search.nixos.org/packages?query=home%20manager&from=0&size=30&sort=relevance&channel=unstable)

happysalada on 14 Sep 2020

@happysalada sorry if I was not clear, sudo nix-channel --update home-manager solved the problem for me.

austinbutler on 14 Sep 2020

👍1

Problem solved, after I forcefully flushed my outdated /var/src/home-manager clone. For some reason, it didn't update properly, but that's on me :)

jpotier on 15 Sep 2020

@rycee Guess the error I got is similar to the op's and I worked around it setting manual.manpages.enable = false; in home.nix

$ nix-store --read-log /nix/store/yg3p4f65l854j8kbhq52m6jq817jw786-manual-combined.drv

/nix/store/ypag5j9a8gf1flv0za65jga2v28xzk8f-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml:11713: element xref: validity error : I>
11709 This release has the following notable changes:
11710
11711
11712
11713 The option now allows source files to be
11714 hidden, that is, having a name starting with the . character. It
11715 also allows the source file name to contain characters not typically

/nix/store/ypag5j9a8gf1flv0za65jga2v28xzk8f-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml fails to validate

I used nix-shell -E "with import <nixpkgs> {}; mkShell { buildInputs = [ (callPackage ~/.config/nixpkgs/home-sources.nix {}).home-manager ]; }" --run "home-manager -f ~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix switch" for switch

Info:

$ nix-channel --list
nixpkgs https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable

$ nix run nixpkgs.nix-info --command nix-info ; nix eval '()'
warning: Nix search path entry '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs' does not exist, ignoring
warning: Nix search path entry '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels' does not exist, ignoring
warning: Nix search path entry '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs' does not exist, ignoring
warning: Nix search path entry '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels' does not exist, ignoring
system: "x86_64-linux", multi-user?: no, version: nix-env (Nix) 2.3.7, channels(me): "nixpkgs-21.03pre243353.6d4b93323e7", warning: Nix search path entry '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs' does not exist, ignoring
warning: Nix search path entry '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels' does not exist, ignoring
nixpkgs: /home/me/.nix-defexpr/channels/nixpkgs
warning: Nix search path entry '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels' does not exist, ignoring
error: file 'home-manager' was not found in the Nix search path (add it using $NIX_PATH or -I), at (string):1:2

error: file 'home-manager' was not found in the Nix search path (add it using $NIX_PATH or -I), at (string):1:2

573 on 16 Sep 2020

This is how I install home-manager: https://github.com/sgraf812/.nixpkgs/blob/92003c2ae396ae6d67c9a360e9fcd7980a715670/home/user-common.nix#L125

I was hoping that I could just bump the version in my release file to update both NixOS and home-manager. That worked for the last two releases, I believe, but not for the latest one. Probably because the old home-manager (which uses loaOf) tries to build the manual-combined from the new nixpkgs or whatever. The solution might be to first bump the release, then home-manager switch, then nix-channel --update my nixpkgs branch. But I remember from past upgrades that that had similar bootstrapping issues, so that's not an option.

The solution to the bootstrapping problem in my case was to follow https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/1479#issuecomment-689729374 and install the newest version of home-manager (after having done nix-channel --update) via

$ nix-shell https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-20.09.tar.gz -A install

This will create the new generation with an updated home-manager, and that works.

sgraf812 on 19 Oct 2020

👍1

Today I installed a new system and I am facing this very specific issue.

I have the following channels enabled, for the system:

otavio ~ % sudo nix-channel --list
home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-20.09.tar.gz
nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-20.09

Then I have added it to environment.systemPackages so I can use it on the home directory to inspect the news and do local home-manager switch as well. When triggering it, it fails:

otavio ~ % home-manager switch
these derivations will be built:
  /nix/store/2ms4h8fmzaqfap5g059mnkabhw25d0nm-manual-combined.drv
  /nix/store/6f69sdhn32v0v4cqhd0bw5fgpx2s39n8-manual-olinkdb.drv
  /nix/store/cb7ghfjr8xp1g5293rrxcv8ccjhqxid1-man-pages.drv
  /nix/store/qsdqhrfp4ndw4lnfxcsl6z8fg1fc9lfy-home-manager-path.drv
  /nix/store/8m87r07kijfrzn5a02adhi9mhpwsr4c3-activation-script.drv
  /nix/store/zakkjvvdhzqfx73lsmnw3i375cymm8qz-home-manager-generation.drv
building '/nix/store/2ms4h8fmzaqfap5g059mnkabhw25d0nm-manual-combined.drv'...

/nix/store/8a4av253s8bl6rmzz3lv5gbwwz1rpfpj-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml:11069: element xref: validity error : IDREF attribute linkend references an unknown ID "opt-home.file._name__.source"
 11065  <simpara>This release has the following notable changes:</simpara>
 11066  <itemizedlist>
 11067  <listitem>
 11068  <simpara>
 11069  The <xref linkend="opt-home.file._name__.source"/> option now allows source files to be
 11070  hidden, that is, having a name starting with the <literal>.</literal> character. It
 11071  also allows the source file name to contain characters not typically

/nix/store/8a4av253s8bl6rmzz3lv5gbwwz1rpfpj-manual-combined/manual-combined.xml fails to validate
builder for '/nix/store/2ms4h8fmzaqfap5g059mnkabhw25d0nm-manual-combined.drv' failed with exit code 3
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/cb7ghfjr8xp1g5293rrxcv8ccjhqxid1-man-pages.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/qsdqhrfp4ndw4lnfxcsl6z8fg1fc9lfy-home-manager-path.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation '/nix/store/zakkjvvdhzqfx73lsmnw3i375cymm8qz-home-manager-generation.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
error: build of '/nix/store/zakkjvvdhzqfx73lsmnw3i375cymm8qz-home-manager-generation.drv' failed

There are 106 unread and relevant news items.
Read them by running the command 'home-manager news'.

There is something wrong. I tried the suggestions from previous comments but it did not help. Any idea how to find out the culprit?

otavio on 5 Nov 2020

Until recently, the home-manager in Nixpkgs was the 20.03 version (meaning you had a 20.03 home-manager on 20.09). I recent PR'd an update (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/102549), so the next time nixos-20.09 bumps, you'll be able to use the updated package.

cole-h on 5 Nov 2020

This continues to be an issue for me. Like otavio, I've tried a bunch of different fixes listed in here, and nothing's working; even after re-adding a new nix-channel, updating that, and reinstalling home-manager, I can't update. Has anybody considered checking manual-combined.xml for typos?