Upgrading nushell breaks my i3 config

[mfdorst]

Describe the bug

When I upgrade from 0.65.0 to 0.66.0, after rebooting, my background is not set and my polybar is not running. After going back to 0.65.0 they work again. I don't know what's causing the problem, but the one commonality I can see is that they're both started using exec_always in my i3 configuration file.

I have no idea how exec_always works in i3, but I guess it must be starting up my default shell because otherwise my version of nushell would have nothing to do with it.

Here are the lines in my i3 config:

# Show desktop background
exec_always --no-startup-id set-wallpaper

# Polybar
exec_always --no-startup-id polybar-launch

Both the set-wallpaper script and the polybar-launch scripts are bash scripts, so they are not themselves invoking nu.

This issue persists on the latest main.

How to reproduce

1. Install i3
2. Include an exec_always line in your i3 config (located at ~/.config/i3/config)
   • Example: exec_always --no-startup-id feh --bg-scale /path/to/some/image.png
3. Log into i3.

Expected behavior

The exec_always line should run on login. (It does not).

In the case of the given example, the background is not set.

Screenshots

No response

Configuration

key	value
version	0.66.3
branch
commit_hash	1086fbe
build_os	linux-x86_64
build_target	x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
rust_version	rustc 1.62.1 (e092d0b6b 2022-07-16)
rust_channel	stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
cargo_version	cargo 1.62.1 (a748cf5a3 2022-06-08)
pkg_version	0.66.3
build_time	2022-07-31 18:24:42 -07:00
build_rust_channel	release
features	database, dataframe, default, trash, which, zip
installed_plugins

Additional context

No response

[merelymyself]

Are you sure this is a nushell issue? Does i3 throw errors?

Related: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/302105/feh-and-i3-gaps-not-playing-nicely/325737#325737

[mfdorst]

@merelymyself it works perfectly in 0.65.0, so I think it's unlikely to be an i3 problem.

[mfdorst]

Okay, now I don't know what the hell is going on. I tested with changing my shell to zsh and bash, and it's broken on both of them. I don't understand why nushell 0.65.0 would work but 0.66.0 doesn't and neither do other shells. I guess it is an i3 issue then?

[mfdorst]

Okay, so I've figured out the problem. I was not specifying the full paths to the scripts I was running.

exec_always --no-startup-id set-wallpaper

should have been

exec_always --no-startup-id $HOME/scripts/set-wallpaper

I guess what this means is that i3 was somehow receiving the PATH environment variable from nushell version 0.65.0 and it doesn't receive it anymore on 0.66.0 and later. That brings it inline with zsh, where this also doesn't work unless I specify the full path, so I guess this is not a bug. I'm very curious what might have caused this change though.

[merelymyself]

I’m not 100% sure, but maybe #6150? Either way, does your config work now?

[kubouch]

Can you post the output of env | get PATH on both 0.65 and 0.66?

[mfdorst]

@merelymyself yes my configuration does work now that I'm specifying full paths.

[mfdorst]

@kubouch That command didn't work but $env.PATH did.

$env.PATH | to text on 0.65.0:

/home/michael/.cargo/bin
/home/michael/.local/bin
/sbin
/bin
/usr/local/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/usr/sbin
/var/lib/snapd/snap/bin
/usr/bin/site_perl
/usr/bin/vendor_perl
/usr/bin/core_perl

$env.PATH | to text on 0.66.0:

/home/michael/.cargo/bin
/home/michael/.local/bin
/sbin
/bin
/usr/local/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/usr/sbin
/var/lib/snapd/snap/bin
/usr/bin/site_perl
/usr/bin/vendor_perl
/usr/bin/core_perl

EDIT: Looks like they're identical, but what's very interesting is that my scripts directory is not in either one. Nonetheless I can call my scripts by name in the shell. I don't know what's going on there.

EDIT 2: I checked env.nu and I do have this line in there.

let-env PATH = ($env.PATH | split row (char esep) | prepend '~/scripts')

So I don't know why it's not showing in my path.

[kubouch]

Ah, I wrote it wrong. I meant if you could show the PATH after translation to string, i.e., the raw column when running the env command.