Re: Trying to fix IBus

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Chris Marusich <address@hidden> writes:

> Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> NixOS encountered the same problem:
>>
>>     https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/14568
>>
>> I don’t like their solution to set a variable NIX_PROFILES and let GTK
>> look for immodule files in each of the directories.
>
> Why don't you like their solution?  Why do you believe that your
> proposed solution is better than their solution?  We should make sure to
> choose the best solution available, and right now I'm not sure which one
> is better.

I find it very inelegant to ask users to specify a list of directories
containing profiles.  A mechanism like that also seems like a hack to
me, and I’m afraid that we would begin to rely more and more on this to
“solve” other problems.

Splitting a variable that GTK is already using anyway into two different
versions just seems a lot cleaner to me.  The variable won’t even need
to be exposed to most users; we could set it automatically when
generating profiles.

Eventually this will disappear once the GTK devs retire support for
separate input method modules (I guess this would make IBus a hard
dependency on GNU systems).  At that point we can easily drop our
patches and the profile hook; a generic GUIX_PROFILES variable, on the
other hand, would be more difficult to deprecate if it becomes more
popular (as it has a much broader scope).

>> Instead, I think we should patch both GTK versions to respect
>> GUIX_GTK2_IM_MODULE_FILE and GUIX_GTK3_IM_MODULE_FILE, and generate
>> the immodule cache files in a profile hook.
>>
>> We did something similar before with GUIX_GTK2_PATH and GUIX_GTK3_PATH.
>
> I believe you are referring to this thread:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-12/msg00046.html
>
> Did that patch actually get committed?  If so, why didn't it solve the
> problem?  I've read all the relevant discussions I could find [1], and
> it isn't clear to me why we need to do what you're suggesting ("patch
> both GTK versions to respect GUIX_GTK2_IM_MODULE_FILE and
> GUIX_GTK3_IM_MODULE_FILE, and generate the immodule cache files in a
> profile hook") if we've already committed the patch presented in the
> thread above.

Yes, that patch got committed and it actually solved a problem.  It is a
different problem, though.  GTK really assumes modules to be in one
place, which means that with immutable directories we have no other way
to make things work.

~~ Ricardo