Add daily email for 08/04/25

source/_daily_emails/2025-04-08.md

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+---
+title: Chaining tools for maximum benefit
+date: 2025-04-08
+permalink: daily/2025/04/08/chaining
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - linux
+  - nix
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  Yesterday I showed how I'm using Nix to build my presentation slide decks with rst2pdf. Today, I'm using some other tools to make it even easier.
+---
+
+Yesterday I showed [how I'm using Nix to build my presentation slide decks][0] with rst2pdf.
+
+This allows me to run a simple command like `nix build .#test-driven-drupal` to build the slides for the given presentation.
+
+But I can use other tools to make this even easier.
+
+What if I wanted to have a list of the available presentations to select from, and selecting one would build it?
+
+Following the UNIX philosophy, I can use multiple tools together to achieve this.
+
+Firstly, I can run `nix flake show --json` to show the output from my flake.nix file, which looks something like this:
+
+```json
+{
+  "devShells": { ... },
+  "formatter": { ... },
+  "packages": {
+    "x86_64-linux": {
+      "build-configs": { ... },
+      "sculpin": { ... },
+      "shared": { ... }
+    }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+The package names - a.k.a. the presentation names - are what I want to select from.
+
+I can parse the JSON object with `jq`, remove any unwanted options with `grep -v` and use `fzf` to give me a list I can fuzzy search in.
+
+In a Bash script, I can assign this to a variable:
+
+```bash
+selected=$(nix flake show --json | jq --raw-output '.packages["x86_64-linux"] | keys[]' | grep -v shared | fzf)
+```
+
+Once I have selected a name, I can call `nix build` on it.
+
+```bash
+nix build .#"$selected"
+```
+
+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.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/04/07/nix-rst2pdf