nixos/networkmanager: make basePackages configurable, rename packages…

[Lassulus]

… to extraPackages

Motivation for this change

alternate implementation of #84433

Things done

• Built on platform(s)
  • x86_64-linux
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • aarch64-darwin
• For non-Linux: Is sandbox = true set in nix.conf? (See Nix manual)
• Tested via one or more NixOS test(s) if existing and applicable for the change (look inside nixos/tests)
• Tested compilation of all packages that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review wip"
• Tested execution of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• 21.11 Release Notes (or backporting 21.05 Release notes)
  • (Package updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is major or breaking
  • (Module updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is significant
  • (Module addition) Added a release notes entry if adding a new NixOS module
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

[lovesegfault]

I think networkmanager should just always be included? Does it make sense to enable the module without including the base package?

[Lassulus]

maybe someone wants to override the package? but yeah, maybe we should do it some other way, but this was the least complex way I could think about

[lovesegfault]

Wait, now I got to this point and I'm a bit confused, why are all those plugins in the base instead of here?

[Lassulus]

just for backwards compatibility. so people don't get missing packages if they don't change anything. the old packages option was really an extraPackages option and if we set a value here, it will override the default list.

[jtojnar]

The packages are also included in environment.etc unconditionally so this will not be enough. We will need the passthru solution as described on the other PR.

[jtojnar]

Also with that, there should not really be a need to distinguish the base and extra packages.

[Lassulus]

If I get this correctly, the passthru stuff should be added to each networkmanager package? I can try to do this also in this PR.
I did the split between base/extra-packages only because of backwards compatiblity. maybe a solution with stateVersion and a single packages option would be nicer?

[roberth]

Shouldn't this be an attrset? That way you can override specific packages.

[jtojnar]

If I get this correctly, the passthru stuff should be added to each networkmanager package?

Yes, I would imagine something like

passthru = {
  networkManagerVpnPlugInName = "nm-strongswan-service";
};

And the module would link those files.

Shouldn't this be an attrset? That way you can override specific packages.

That would be nice but I have not seen any standard for this to emerge so far. I think @infinisil was considering one?

[Lassulus]

Alright, I hope I did the right thing with the passthrus. Marked is as draft for now, until some (maybe me?) can test it on an actual system.

Also I'm not sure if the split in basePackages + extraPackges is fine. Maybe we can write something in the release notes or add the packages depending on desktop environment so we have less complex code in the module.

[jtojnar]

I have rebased this in #164531 and slightly changed.

[infinisil]

Shouldn't this be an attrset? That way you can override specific packages.

That would be nice but I have not seen any standard for this to emerge so far. I think @infinisil was considering one?

There's no established standard, but I think this is a good case where making this an attribute set is very beneficial. This way users can not only override plugins, but also remove them (by setting the attribute to null).

[infinisil]

Though I haven't looked into the backwards compatibility aspect of this, since there already is the existing packages option of type list

[roberth]

A coercedTo type can host the deprecated and the new type in the same option.

[Lassulus]

closing this in favor of #164531 which is a cleaner solution IMHO

[nixos-discourse]

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/networkmanager-plugins-installed-by-default/39682/8