albert is not working: no result for queries

[romildo]

Issue description

Latest versions of Albert is not working as expected in NixOS. The latest one that works is version 0.8.11.

I have also opened an issue in albert's repository: albertlauncher/albert#397

Steps to reproduce

Open albert (using a hotkey or from the system tray icon) and type a query in the input box. A list of applications should be shown so that the user could choose one to be executed. But no result is appearing.

Albert's github page has an animated image demonstrating how it would work.

Technical details

• System: (NixOS: nixos-version, Ubuntu/Fedora: lsb_release -a, ...)
  17.09pre102667.2839b10 (Hummingbird)

• Nix version: (run nix-env --version)
  nix-env (Nix) 1.11.7

• Nixpkgs version: (run nix-instantiate --eval '<nixpkgs>' -A lib.nixpkgsVersion)
  "17.09pre102667.2839b10"

[PierreR]

I have the same issue.

It does seem to work if I pass the location path of the plugin directory manually:

 albert -p /nix/store/282n5p1ic2ia5gdagl1swkyv8gm40mlp-albert-0.9.3/lib/albert/plugins/

[PierreR]

@ericsagnes do you know of any trick that could be used in default.nix to get a 'wrapper' that would set the plugin path automatically ?

[ericsagnes]

Upstream is looking for plugins in hardcoded paths.
This is indeed not working well in nix case as albert plugins are in the nix store.
A workaround could be to use makeWrapper/wrapQtProgram to automatically set the plugin path with -p as you pointed like:

wrapQtProgram $out/bin/albert --add-flags "-p $out/lib/albert/plugins/"

[PierreR]

@ericsagnes Thanks. I have just PR the suggested change. It works nicely.

[ericsagnes]

Nice! But be aware that this is more a workaround than a real fix, as using the -p flag with the PR version will override the one passed in --add-flags and shadow the default plugins.

Ideally, this should be adressed upstream by providing a more flexible way to point plugins like a dedicated environment variable.

[romildo]

It would be better to modify albert source code to add the plugins directory (in the store location for albert) to the list of directories used to search plugins.

With the following snippet of code added to default.nix, albert works, without the need to use the -p command line option.

  postPatch = ''
    sed -i "/QStringList dirs = {/a    \"$out/lib\"," \
      src/lib/albert/src/pluginsystem/extensionmanager.cpp
  '';