Make gnome apps appear automatically in applications menu upon install

[llakala]

Not sure if this is possible, but would certainly be nice.

Relevant links:

NixOS/nixpkgs#12757

https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/ni4vjd/how_to_update_gnome_application_list_icons_after/

https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/ofmzb9/comment/jzlolrc/?share_id=AkmQS3yMYBtGrNocXg5sB

[radioaddition]

Per the second link: unfortunately alt+f2 restarting only works on x11, not Wayland. Not sure if that means it's not possible on Wayland or if you just gotta do some cli stuff to get it to work

[llakala]

Per the second link: unfortunately alt+f2 restarting only works on x11, not Wayland. Not sure if that means it's not possible on Wayland or if you just gotta do some cli stuff to get it to work

Yeah, that one's stupid and old. Just wanted to put everything I'd found. The other ones seem promising, though.

[radioaddition]

Found a link and put it on my issue tracker that may interest you

[llakala]

Found a link and put it on my issue tracker that may interest you

Awesome, putting it here for my future reference:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/12118/how-do-i-refresh-gnome-3-applications/565807#565807

[llakala]

@radioaddition
After doing some testing, I'm completely confident this is a home-manager issue. Unfortunately, it means that the solutions with xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate and update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications aren't helpful for us.

When I install gnome-calendar through home.packages, it doesn't appear in the gnome application list. When I then take it out of home.packages, and move it into environment.systemPackages, it shows up immediately. Any apps I've put in environment.systemPackages have appeared in the application list immediately. They don't show up with their desktop icon, but that appears after one more rebuild.

That sounds simple. But it gets more complicated.

Many of my currently installed apps seem completely unable to ever appear in the app list. I've tested with Kitty, VSCode, and Obsidian. Kitty and VSCode were installed via a home-manager module, via programs.programName.enable. Obsidian was installed via home.packages originally. Whether I put these in environment.systemPackages, move them to pkgs-unstable, remove and reinstall them, run the commands specified in the stackoverflow post, nothing seems to work.

This could be a me problem. Being previously on standalone and now installed as a module, with homeConfigurations still used, is absolutely a strange paradigm. I don't trust my machine as being representative of the average case. I plan on reinstalling NixOS to my desktop whenever I get the time, and I think that'll be a much better true test. Maybe the apps will just appear and I'll know it's a Framework Laptop skill issue.

If you have any luck reproducing any of this, let me know!

[llakala]

Maybe it's a home-manager standalone issue. After all, I was previously on standalone, and am now on home-manager as a module. As a module, it seems like removing things from home.packages and putting them in environment.systemPackages makes them immediately appear. But all the currently-installed apps that don't seem to work were installed before, when I was on standalone. So maybe there's a standalone bug where somehow the state of the app not appearing in the Applications menu persists.

(This is a shaky hypothesis with the evidence I have: a real clean test is needed, with someone like you trying to reproduce on standalone, and me trying to reproduce with a clean install on my desktop.)

[radioaddition]

Mark as closed with solution: just don't use home.packages

[radioaddition]

Oh shit I thought this was my issue tracker XD

[llakala]

Well, meanwhile, I have not solved the issue. When booting into a VM, it appeared like this:

This is even less apps than I have installed right now.

Next step is to see what happens when we reinstall.

[damccull]

Also experiencing this with some apps. Obsidian is my bane right now.
I have solved it manually for now with a little ln -s $(pwd)/share/applications/obsidian.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/obsidian.desktop action from inside the nix store package directory, but that's clearly not going to survive the next update I get for this package.

[llakala]

Also experiencing this with some apps. Obsidian is my bane right now.
I have solved it manually for now with a little ln -s $(pwd)/share/applications/obsidian.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/obsidian.desktop action from inside the nix store package directory, but that's clearly not going to survive the next update I get for this package.

Interesting. Do you have Home-Manager installed standalone (or did you ever on the current system since the last reinstall)?

[damccull]

My home manager is run as part of the system update, so it's integrated. But I installed obsidian via env.packages rather than through home manager. I keep forgetting to check home-manager lol.