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