Nixpkgs: Add some documentation on finding/getting an editor after installation

[andrewufrank]

Issue description

fresh/clean install. edi the config file to add a package (in this case an editor) - but no editor is easy to find in the initial config to edit later the config (this is called the chicken and egg problem?)

by the way - the manual, when mentioning the config file, point out its full name (including the location in /etc/nixos). this is not obvious when you run nix the first time!

(This happens with all reasonable NixOS versions — @7c6f434c )

[7c6f434c]

1. There is an editor, nano.

2. Technically, you can nix-env -iA vim or something without editing config, then, if desired, remove the editor from profile when it is installed system-wide.

[andrewufrank]

thank you - i did not think of nano. i was looking through the menus and did not find any; of course, nano would not be listed there. perhaps you add a comment to avoid stupid questions like this from newbies trying to use your interesting OS.

[7c6f434c]

Let's hijack the issue to describe the real problem then…

[pstn]

While we are on it we could also think about adding an option in nix that installs your chosen default editor and sets the EDITOR env accordingly.

[andrewufrank]

good idea! for newbies, give some hints (e.g. gedit or similar)

[FRidh]

Perhaps add environment.variables."EDITOR" = "${pkgs.nano}/bin/nano"; to the template?
But I saw that we also have programs.vim.defaultEditor and services.emacs.defaultEditor.

[pstn]

I suggest we deprecate programs.vim.defaultEditor and services.emacs.defaultEditor and wrap the environment variable to something nice like programs.editor.default = nano|emacs|vim like it has been done withservices.xserver.windowManager.default.

[andrewufrank]

add one of the simple editors as well - gedit, mousepad or one of the other graphical easy ones. It is important to have a very low entry threshold to capture new potential users. Something like the 2 second rules on web pages: if the new OS does not work out of the box for the newbie, it is dumped...

[pstn]

I'm all for making editing text files easy, but I'm not sure what good it is to set EDITOR to something with a gui. I think a user that might need help with editing text files will install a desktop environment that presents it's default editor to the user by itself. On the other hand, a user might try to do something like
sudo $EDITOR /etc/nixos/configuration.nix because they pasted it from some web page and unknowingly run gedit with root, making their system insecure.

[Mic92]

What makes it more insecure and using an terminal-based one with root privileges?

[das-g]

$EDITOR is expected to point to an editor that works without X, whether run as root or not. sudoedit uses $EDITOR and is expected to also work in the system terminals, independent of whether any X session is present.

[oxij]

I'm all for setting EDITOR to something sane like nano by default and
for generalizing it similarly to X11.

add one of the simple editors as well - gedit, mousepad or one of the other graphical easy ones. It is important to have a very low entry threshold to capture new potential users. Something like the 2 second rules on web pages: if the new OS does not work out of the box for the newbie, it is dumped...

I don't think this argument really applies to NixOS. Any OS that
_requires_ you to edit some configuration files before you even install
it is not for a newbie unless that newbie has some interested IT
personnel around.

I imagine it could be possible to make a usable GUI for
configuration.nix with text lenses (in Haskell), though.

But, in general, good installers (like Debian's) take a lot of effort to
produce and yet most people never ever install their OS and most people
that do install their OS could have just learned the shell commands.

[stale[bot]]

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[Mic92]

I think we should include nano in our configuration.nix that we generate.

[das-g]

I think we should include nano in our configuration.nix that we generate.

Would
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/c9057b3751a604ba009a85acc45dde06c919886e/nixos/modules/installer/tools/tools.nix#L125-L127
be the right place to change that?