How to use nvim with nixCats

[hmajid2301]

Hi (again!),

I am sure it is somewhere in the docs how to do, so sorry if this is an obvious question. How can I easily assign nvim to use one of my NixCats configs? I.e. the default editor for say zellij when opening panes in Neovim (for copying commands or opening links gx).

Currently, I have two packageDefinitions → nixCats and regularCats taken from your example.

I tried enabling it like this, but it uses the default nvim config my own one, which makes sense because there is no config in the nvim folder in config.

 programs.neovim = {
     enable = true;
    viAlias = true;
    vimAlias = true;
    defaultEditor = true;
 };

So what's the best way to make Neovim my default editor and assign nvim to use one of my NixCats config?

Link to config: https://gitlab.com/hmajid2301/nixicle/-/blob/MAJ-335/modules/home/cli/editors/neovim/default.nix?ref_type=heads

Thank you! I've really enjoyed moving to NixCats to manage my config.

[BirdeeHub]

 programs.neovim = {
     enable = true;
    viAlias = true;
    vimAlias = true;
    defaultEditor = true;
 };

^ this is an entirely different module. You should remove these, they will not do what you want.

You can make a nixCats package named nvim if you want though still, the name of the item in the packageDefinitions set is the name of the package, and there is an aliases setting as well, as long as your names dont conflict with one another you can name them anything you want.

For home manager you would want this, where PACKAGENAME would be the name from packageDefinitions, which I suppose in your case is nixCats or regularCats but you can name them anything you want (including nvim):

  home.sessionVariables = {
    EDITOR = "PACKAGENAME";
    MANPAGER = "PACKAGENAME +Man!";
  };

and for nixos and I think also nix-darwin

  environment.variables = {
    EDITOR = "PACKAGENAME";
    MANPAGER = "PACKAGENAME +Man!";
  };

If you get the actual drv, you can replace PACKAGENAME with ${thedrv}/bin/${thedrv.nixCats_packageName} as well if you want an absolute path instead.

As far as the alias options go, nixCats has its own alias options in the settings of your packageDefinitions, and you just install the drv and it will add those as well.

But yeah, in summary, you just have to set EDITOR variable, and also MANPAGER if you want, and any way you can set these variables will work (for the scopes in which they are set, of course, which is why setting them in the global environment as the demonstrated options above do is suggested, even if you wanted to also explicitly set it in a wrapper for tmux for when using your tmux wrapper separately from your config as well for example)