The program creates it's backup directory with read only permissions if it's installed in read only mode

[deivpaukst]

I packaged up the program for myself on NixOS today and noticed that the program crashes when booted for the second time.

I looked at the functions that cause the crash and from what I can tell the copy2() and copytree() functions copy over the permission bits to the destination. This doesn't work if the program is installed on NixOS, because programs are installed in a read only environment.

Here's the log:
casual-pre-loader.log.txt

[djsigmann]

Well, as one can see in the log, it is attempting to copy files from the installation directory (i.e. files shipped with the program) into your user-local data directory. which should be writable, as it's under your home directory - not to mention, this is the expected location for programs to store data in.

[djsigmann]

Please confirm that ~/.local/share/casual-pre-loader exists and is writable.

[deivpaukst]

Yeah, but the problem is that it's installation directories are read only, so everything in the newly created backup folder is read only too.

[deivpaukst]

Please confirm that ~/.local/share/casual-pre-loader exists and is writable.

They are.

[deivpaukst]

I looked at the docs for shutil, the copy2 and copytree functions copy the permission bits from the src to the dst, which are read only in my case.

[djsigmann]

Yeah, but the problem is that it's installation directories are read only, so everything in the newly created backup folder is read only too.

Ahh, I see, is this typical for NixOS? I know NixOS is all about having each package super contained, but most linux distros I've used usually have package-owned files set to 0644 or 0755 for dirs and executables.
Or was this perhaps something you did yourself?

If this is typical, we could simply add a quick fix that just adds the write flag recursively when copying from backup/.

[deivpaukst]

Afaik, yeah. When a program is installed all the files it came with are read or read and execute only, it has to manage it's state somewhere else, be that the user's home dir, etc or some other place.

[djsigmann]

Afaik, yeah. When a program is installed all the files it came with are read or read and execute only, it has to manage it's state somewhere else, be that the user's home dir, etc or some other place.

Interesting, again, most distros leave the write flag alone (I presume since all those files are owned by root anyway, and can't be modified by regular users).

[djsigmann]

I have a quick fix here, feel free to test.

This needs to be improved before being merged into main, though.

[deivpaukst]

I tested it by deleting the backup folder, then running the new version, closing it and running it again, and it works perfectly now. :D

[deivpaukst]

The only funny thing that's left is that the modified date for everything in that folder is set to 1970-01-01 (because packaged program files on NixOS have that set to that), but unless something in the program needs the modified date from that folder, it's not really a problem.

[djsigmann]

It most likely does not matter, but I can set the mtime too I guess.

[djsigmann]

By the way, would you mind sharing the package you made? I'd like to link to it from the documentation. We've had a couple of NixOS users trying to make their own packages, so it'd be nice to point to an 'official' one.