oliverdavies.uk/content/node.7210b16f-71c2-44c4-9dc1-4264b243c618.yml

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title:
  - value: 'Chaining tools for maximum benefit'
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body:
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      <p>Yesterday I showed <a href="/daily/2025/04/07/nix-rst2pdf">how I'm using Nix to build my presentation slide decks</a> with rst2pdf.</p>

      <p>This allows me to run a simple command like <code>nix build .#test-driven-drupal</code> to build the slides for the given presentation.</p>

      <p>But I can use other tools to make this even easier.</p>

      <p>What if I wanted to have a list of the available presentations to select from, and selecting one would build it?</p>

      <p>Following the UNIX philosophy, I can use multiple tools together to achieve this.</p>

      <p>Firstly, I can run <code>nix flake show --json</code> to show the output from my flake.nix file, which looks something like this:</p>

      <pre><code class="json">{
        "devShells": { ... },
        "formatter": { ... },
        "packages": {
          "x86_64-linux": {
            "build-configs": { ... },
            "sculpin": { ... },
            "shared": { ... }
          }
        }
      }
      </code></pre>

      <p>The package names - a.k.a. the presentation names - are what I want to select from.</p>

      <p>I can parse the JSON object with <code>jq</code>, remove any unwanted options with <code>grep -v</code> and use <code>fzf</code> to give me a list I can fuzzy search in.</p>

      <p>In a Bash script, I can assign this to a variable:</p>

      <pre><code class="bash">selected=$(nix flake show --json | jq --raw-output '.packages["x86_64-linux"] | keys[]' | grep -v shared | fzf)
      </code></pre>

      <p>Once I have selected a name, I can call <code>nix build</code> on it.</p>

      <pre><code class="bash">nix build .#"$selected"
      </code></pre>

      <p>This is a simple example, but it shows how programs can be used together and output can be passed through each program to get the result you want.</p>

              
    format: full_html
    processed: |
      <p>Yesterday I showed <a href="/daily/2025/04/07/nix-rst2pdf">how I'm using Nix to build my presentation slide decks</a> with rst2pdf.</p>

      <p>This allows me to run a simple command like <code>nix build .#test-driven-drupal</code> to build the slides for the given presentation.</p>

      <p>But I can use other tools to make this even easier.</p>

      <p>What if I wanted to have a list of the available presentations to select from, and selecting one would build it?</p>

      <p>Following the UNIX philosophy, I can use multiple tools together to achieve this.</p>

      <p>Firstly, I can run <code>nix flake show --json</code> to show the output from my flake.nix file, which looks something like this:</p>

      <pre><code class="json">{
        "devShells": { ... },
        "formatter": { ... },
        "packages": {
          "x86_64-linux": {
            "build-configs": { ... },
            "sculpin": { ... },
            "shared": { ... }
          }
        }
      }
      </code></pre>

      <p>The package names - a.k.a. the presentation names - are what I want to select from.</p>

      <p>I can parse the JSON object with <code>jq</code>, remove any unwanted options with <code>grep -v</code> and use <code>fzf</code> to give me a list I can fuzzy search in.</p>

      <p>In a Bash script, I can assign this to a variable:</p>

      <pre><code class="bash">selected=$(nix flake show --json | jq --raw-output '.packages["x86_64-linux"] | keys[]' | grep -v shared | fzf)
      </code></pre>

      <p>Once I have selected a name, I can call <code>nix build</code> on it.</p>

      <pre><code class="bash">nix build .#"$selected"
      </code></pre>

      <p>This is a simple example, but it shows how programs can be used together and output can be passed through each program to get the result you want.</p>

              
    summary: null
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