pyrox.dev
1
2# `patchRcPath` hooks {#sec-patchRcPathHooks}
3
4These hooks provide shell-specific utilities (with the same name as the hook) to patch shell scripts meant to be sourced by software users.
5
6The typical usage is to patch initialisation or [rc](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3467/what-does-rc-in-bashrc-stand-for) scripts inside `$out/bin` or `$out/etc`.
7Such scripts, when being sourced, would insert the binary locations of certain commands into `PATH`, modify other environment variables or run a series of start-up commands.
8When shipped from the upstream, they sometimes use commands that might not be available in the environment they are getting sourced in.
9
10The compatible shells for each hook are:
11
12 - `patchRcPathBash`: [Bash](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/), [ksh](http://www.kornshell.org/), [zsh](https://www.zsh.org/) and other shells supporting the Bash-like parameter expansions.
13 - `patchRcPathCsh`: Csh scripts, such as those targeting [tcsh](https://www.tcsh.org/).
14 - `patchRcPathFish`: [Fish](https://fishshell.com/) scripts.
15 - `patchRcPathPosix`: POSIX-conformant shells supporting the limited parameter expansions specified by the POSIX standard. Current implementation uses the parameter expansion `${foo-}` only.
16
17For each supported shell, it modifies the script with a `PATH` prefix that is later removed when the script ends.
18It allows nested patching, which guarantees that a patched script may source another patched script.
19
20Syntax to apply the utility to a script:
21
22```sh
23patchRcPath<shell> <file> <PATH-prefix>
24```
25
26Example usage:
27
28Given a package `foo` containing an init script `this-foo.fish` that depends on `coreutils`, `man` and `which`,
29patch the init script for users to source without having the above dependencies in their `PATH`:
30
31```nix
32{ lib, stdenv, patchRcPathFish}:
33stdenv.mkDerivation {
34
35 # ...
36
37 nativeBuildInputs = [
38 patchRcPathFish
39 ];
40
41 postFixup = ''
42 patchRcPathFish $out/bin/this-foo.fish ${lib.makeBinPath [ coreutils man which ]}
43 '';
44}
45```
46
47::: {.note}
48`patchRcPathCsh` and `patchRcPathPosix` implementation depends on `sed` to do the string processing.
49The others are in vanilla shell and have no third-party dependencies.
50:::