emacs25Macport does not register as an OS X app on OS X

[TikhonJelvis]

Issue description

The Macport version of Emacs 25 builds fine, but doesn't show up in spotlight. Running the emacs command from the terminal only gets me a terminal version of Emacs, not a window.

I had an older Emacs 24 Macport package that worked correctly. I also just replaced it with the normal Emacs 25 package which did get installed properly as a Mac app, callable from Spotlight.

Steps to reproduce

Install emacs25Macport on OS X and try launching emacs from Spotlight.

Technical details

• System: OS X 10.11.6
• Nix version: nix-env (Nix) 1.11.2
• Nixpkgs version: 17.03pre95548.8ef3eae

[periklis]

@TikhonJelvis this is a known issue, but didn't have time to investigate a solution for it. In the meantime open ~/.nix-profile/Application/Emacs.app will help.

[lancelet]

I'm not sure if I'm doing something "obviously" wrong (I'm a complete Nix newbie), but on my system, the build doesn't seem to produce anything in ~/.nix-profile/Application at all.

Steps to reproduce

$ nix-env -i emacs-25.1-mac-6.0
replacing old ‘emacs-25.1-mac-6.0’
installing ‘emacs-25.1-mac-6.0’
$ ls ~/.nix-profile
Library      etc          lib          manifest.nix var
bin          include      libexec      share

I'm mainly wondering: is this the same for @TikhonJelvis, or is there something I'm missing like a basic configuration flag to enable building Mac app bundles?

System details

• macOS 10.12.1
• Nix version: nix-env 1.11.4
• Nixpkgs version: 17.03pre95548.8ef3eae

[TikhonJelvis]

Yes, it sounds like I had the same problem: it didn't produce an $out/Applications folder or put anything in it. The configure step does call ./configure with Mac-specific flags (--with-mac and --enable-mac-app=$$out/Applications), but this doesn't seem to do the right thing.

I spent a few hours playing around with it yesterday, but couldn't figure out what the underlying problem was.

[sellout]

So, I am perhaps seeing a different issue, but I’ll mention it here to see.

If I install emacs via nix-env -i emacs25Macport, it works fine. However, if I use emacsWithPackages, then I only get bin/ and share/ directories in $out. It looks like a bug in emacs/wrapper.nix that it only copies over those particular directories.

[periklis]

hey folks, i want just to link to a similar discussion (here) by homebrew users. It seems not to be a specific issue with nix or nixpkgs. The /nix/store paths as well as the symlinks on ~/.nix-profile/Applications are not searchable by spotlight. You can write you own Autormator script to open emacs and put it under /Applications.

[periklis]

@sellout Are you sure that emacsWithPackages uses the emacs/macport-25.1.nix derivation and not emacs/default.nix?

[sellout]

@periklis I do the following to use the macport instead of default:

(let                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
   customEmacs = pkgs.emacsPackagesNg.override (super: self: {                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
     emacs = pkgs.emacs25Macport;                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
   });                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
 in                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   customEmacs.emacsWithPackages (epkgs: (with epkgs.melpaPackages; [...])))                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

And re: ~/.nix-profile/Applications, the problem is that there is no Emacs.app even there. I run a command like https://nixos.org/wiki/Nix_on_OS_X#Configuration to put the apps in Spotlight-friendly locations.

I think I found the underlying emacsWithPackages problem and reported it as #22893, but it seems @TikhonJelvis and @lancelet are running into something else (unless they’ve similarly configured emacsWithPackages).

[periklis]

@sellout Ok sounds we have a missing-wrapper-issue vor darwin-built binaries landing under Contents.

[mmahut]

Are there any updates to this issue, please?

[stale]

Thank you for your contributions.

This has been automatically marked as stale because it has had no activity for 180 days.

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[Atemu]

emacsMacport produces $out/Applications/Emacs.app/ nowadays.

Everything else is already covered in other issues. If there's anything left, open a new one.