tmux (and possibly others): missing man-pages when installed via nix-shell

[steveej]

Issue description

I generally expect $out/share/man to contain the man-pages that come installed with the package, and often that is the case. So for nix-shell I wrote a snippet that concats the MANPATH accordingly. AFAIU this is similar to what NixOS does for profiles. The problem is that not every package seems to install manpages when installed with nix-shell.

Steps to reproduce

$ nix-shell -p tmux tree
these paths will be fetched (0.03 MiB download, 0.08 MiB unpacked):
  /nix/store/dzg9qyyamyl80y1ngyrm6fkjam7y7g1j-tree-1.7.0
fetching path ‘/nix/store/dzg9qyyamyl80y1ngyrm6fkjam7y7g1j-tree-1.7.0’...

*** Downloading ‘https://cache.nixos.org/nar/12qgijxvjqkk4y1fr7gc6znfm392akv23f1kbwgj7hjdgj9irmbq.nar.xz’ to ‘/nix/store/dzg9qyyamyl80y1ngyrm6fkjam7y7g1j-tree-1.7.0’...
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 32256  100 32256    0     0  53562      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 53581

[nix-shell:~]$ tree $(dirname $(which tmux))/.. 
/nix/store/idhifnqv5rsh105y4fpmbf8rk6rvp65c-tmux-2.3/bin/..
├── bin
│   └── tmux
└── share
    └── bash-completion
        └── completions
            └── tmux

4 directories, 2 files

Technical details

• System: Debian 8 / NixOS 17.09pre106299.7f3b857d0d (Hummingbird)
• Nix version: nix-env (Nix) 1.11.7
• Nixpkgs version: 17.03pre102064.8fcd1a0

[danbst]

It's not a case for multiple output packages. See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/misc/tmux/default.nix#L18
The man page resides in pkgs.tmux.man subattribute

[FRidh]

As pointed out by @danbst they're in a separate attribute that you would have to include.
In a pure environment that would be

$ nix-shell -p tmux tmux.man man less --pure

[steveej]

@FRidh what you suggest will not work, because MANPATH is not automatically set within nix-shells. I mentioned this briefly in the issue description but it is not part of the actual issue.

If you try it you'll see

$ nix-shell -p tmux tmux.man man less --pure

[nix-shell:~]$ man tmux
No manual entry for tmux

[danbst]

In that case I think this is legitimate issue. Setting man path isn't strict requirement when "building" a package, that explains why it doesn't work now.

[FRidh]

Actually, I can't reproduce the error, but that seems to be due to an impurity. Even with

nix-shell -p tmux man less --pure

I get the man pages, so it somehow still seems to find the ones that I've installed.

[fpletz]

It seems that using multiple outputs for manpages breaks this man patch for nix-shell: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/misc/man/default.nix#L18-L19 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/misc/man/share.patch

[veprbl]

Could this be related to NixOS/nix#1379 ?

[steveej]

If you try it you'll see

$ nix-shell -p tmux tmux.man man less --pure

[nix-shell:~]$ man tmux
No manual entry for tmux

This is still reproducible for me today.

[steveej]

This is still reproducible for me today.

Still true :-)

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[steveej]

$ nix-shell -p tmux tmux.man man less --pure --run "man tmux"
No manual entry for tmux

[Artturin]

this is fixed in nix shell

$ man feh
No manual entry for feh
$ nix shell nixpkgs#feh --command man feh && echo worked
worked

May have been fixed by NixOS/nix#6426

we add man to outputsToInstall automatically in

nixpkgs/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix

Lines 425 to 429 in fe30650

	outputsToInstall =
	let
	hasOutput = out: builtins.elem out outputs;
	in [( lib.findFirst hasOutput null (["bin" "out"] ++ outputs) )]
	++ lib.optional (hasOutput "man") "man";

nix-repl> feh.meta.outputsToInstall
[ "out" "man" ]

[KAction]

; nix shell 'nixpkgs#feh' --command man feh && echo worked
No manual entry for feh

[Artturin]

what nix version?

[KAction]

; nix --version
nix (Nix) 2.9.1