I’m trying to run trelby, some screenwriting software. I actually bricked my Ubuntu install when trying to set this up there because wxPython didn’t install, I tried creating venvs and that didn’t work either, and I ended up trying to delete Python entirely… So I ended up here.
I cloned the repo, set up a shell.nix with the required packages, and am now stuck with the same problem I had before: wxPython doesn’t install.
More info
# shell.nix
let
# We pin to a specific nixpkgs commit for reproducibility.
# Last updated: 2024-04-29. Check for new commits at https://status.nixos.org/.
pkgs = import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/cf8cc1201be8bc71b7cbbbdaf349b22f4f99c7ae.tar.gz") {};
in pkgs.mkShell {
packages = [
(pkgs.python3.withPackages (python-pkgs: with python-pkgs; [
# select Python packages here
setuptools
wxPython
lxml
reportlab
pytest
]))
];
}
Output from attempting to run nix-shell:
unpacking 'https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/cf8cc1201be8bc71b7cbbbdaf349b22f4f99c7ae.tar.gz' into the Git cache...
error:
… while calling the 'derivationStrict' builtin
at <nix/derivation-internal.nix>:37:12:
36|
37| strict = derivationStrict drvAttrs;
| ^
38|
… while evaluating derivation 'nix-shell'
whose name attribute is located at /nix/store/4ab6vrcph07w6ra79bc04fy8bbcmb9r0-source/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:331:7
… while evaluating attribute 'nativeBuildInputs' of derivation 'nix-shell'
at /nix/store/4ab6vrcph07w6ra79bc04fy8bbcmb9r0-source/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:375:7:
374| depsBuildBuild = elemAt (elemAt dependencies 0) 0;
375| nativeBuildInputs = elemAt (elemAt dependencies 0) 1;
| ^
376| depsBuildTarget = elemAt (elemAt dependencies 0) 2;
(stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full, detailed trace)
error: undefined variable 'wxPython'
at /home/edwinc/Documents/code/trelby/shell.nix:11:7:
10| setuptools
11| wxPython
| ^
12| lxml
Cheers!
Edit: solved! Just change the wxPython to wxpython on the shell.nix file, and probably also change the manual fetch from an outdated repo to <nixpkgs> as @[email protected] recommended.
Use a docker/podman container for managing python projects in NixOS NixOS doesn’t follow the filesystem hierarchy standard so a lot of standard tooling won’t work without extra steps.
The issue here is that the attribute “wxPython” does not exist in nixpkgs and you’ll have to package it yourself. Trelby is also not packaged either.
Also: https://www.trelby.org/download/
There are pre-built binaries for Ubuntu, Fedora and flatpak from FlatHub. On NixOS you can setup flatpak via a module in your system config and its my recommendation if you’re not going the docker/distrobox route. You don’t need NixOS for this and I would just recommend something like Fedora Atomic with KDE (Fedora Kinoite)
The pypi installation method seems like more trouble than its worth.
I upvoted you out of solidarity but what the fuck, never do this
Use virtual enviroments and git to separate your projects
Huh what do you mean?
Edit: I guess I should have made it more clear that it’s only advice for NixOS specifically. Docker is overkill otherwise
1·3 days agopython312Packages.wxpythondoes exist, maybe it just needs to be all lowercase?
If you don’t have a solution when I get home tonight I’ll install this on Debian and explain how it went.
We should be able to figure out together how to translate that into getting it running on nixos, whatever that is.
This is why I love the linux community
Willing to do anything to name their favorite distro
I would say “I run Debian, btw!” But you already knew because of the b.o. smell.
I’m doing some homework so I haven’t tried what hello_hello said (not looking forward to figuring out how to do everything on Docker, since it was far from trivial even setting it up on Ubuntu). Thanks.
There are prebuilt binaries on their website, you dont have to compile trelby from source on your own.
I just mentioned docker/containers because it’s a way to escape NixOS FHS incompatability and get back to a standard Linux environment.
I’m surprised that trelby isnt packaged in NixOS, maybe someone will get on that.
Yeah you’re absolutely right, I had tried that website 2 days ago but my “spot the download button” skills failed and I had ended up downloading the source code; I ended up thinking the source code was all they had, no binary release.
Saw this post that ran into the same issue, but it’s not clear how they solved it, I can’t figure out what they mean by running the last pip command in the env; I tried simply doing
nix-shell -p python311Packages.pipand then running the command they wrote, but as expected that doesn’t work because you don’t use pip like that in NixOS.Last updated: 2024-04-29
Dear god. You should update that, or maybe just replace it with <nixpkgs>
I just grabbed the stub on the NixOS wiki’s entry for Python
Yeah…
So, two things:
- try changing
(fetchTarball [...])to<nixpkgs>, this should get your software up-to-date with your system. - change
wxPythonto all lowercase
(That is, if you want to do a shell file, and not just docker like hello_hello recommended)
Wow, changing it to
wxpythonjust fixed it instantly. You’re the best! I just hadn’t noticed that the package was in nixpkgs at all.If you dont know about it, check out https://search.nixos.org/
Was using it already! Just hadn’t thought to check the individual python package (obviously in hindsight if that package was giving me trouble I should’ve checked, I just haven’t gotten used to nix being my universal package manager instead of having pip on top of the OS’s package manager)
It is a common pattern in many distros to un-bundle software as much as possible. While programming language package managers like pip, cargo, npm, CPAN, etc. are convenient for developers, it is ideal for end-users not to have fifty versions of Pillow or PyQt on their system, and it allows distro maintainers to ensure obsolete or vulnerable packages receive proper updates. It can be a pain though because the coverage is never 100%.
- try changing
