files: don't handle symlinks in a special way when home.file.<name>.recursive is set to true

[Luflosi]

Description

I'm using pass as my password manager. In order to use it in Firefox, I use the passff extension. The passff extension needs the passff-host native messaging host to access the passwords. Here is what the file structure of the passff-host package looks like:

result
├── etc
│   ├── chromium
│   │   └── native-messaging-hosts
│   │       └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
│   ├── opt
│   │   └── chrome
│   │       └── native-messaging-hosts
│   │           └── passff.json -> ../../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
│   └── vivaldi
│       └── native-messaging-hosts
│           └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
├── lib
│   ├── librewolf
│   │   └── native-messaging-hosts
│   │       └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
│   └── mozilla
│       └── native-messaging-hosts
│           └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
└── share
    └── passff-host
        ├── passff.json
        └── passff.py

As you can see, lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/passff.json is a relative symlink. This is perfectly reasonable. When adding programs.firefox.nativeMessagingHosts = [ pkgs.passff-host ] to the home-manager configuration, the firefox module first joins all the nativeMessagingHosts using symlinkJoin and stores the result in a variable called nativeMessagingHostsJoined. This creates ff_native-messaging-hosts in the Nix store:

/nix/store/bv62k5yl7jwzkhyci838ir3vgz59gqsa-ff_native-messaging-hosts
├── bin
│   └── firefox -> /nix/store/0zqxaz44w75gjq32xj53i32jl2j91pzy-firefox-125.0.1/bin/firefox
├── etc
│   ├── chromium
│   │   └── native-messaging-hosts
│   │       └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
│   ├── opt
│   │   └── chrome
│   │       └── native-messaging-hosts
│   │           └── passff.json -> ../../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
│   └── vivaldi
│       └── native-messaging-hosts
│           └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
├── lib
│   ├── [...]
│   ├── librewolf
│   │   └── native-messaging-hosts
│   │       └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
│   └── mozilla
│       ├── native-messaging-hosts
│       │   └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json
│       └── pkcs11-modules
└── share
    ├── [...]
    └── passff-host
        ├── passff.json -> /nix/store/pag1akgbmls1xa63h6rzmb0h6xxwwzmy-passff-host-1.2.4/share/passff-host/passff.json
        └── passff.py -> /nix/store/pag1akgbmls1xa63h6rzmb0h6xxwwzmy-passff-host-1.2.4/share/passff-host/passff.py

Still perfectly fine. Then the firefox module sets

home.file.".mozilla/native-messaging-hosts" = {
  source = "${nativeMessagingHostsJoined}/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts";
  recursive = true;
}

The file module then calls lndir -silent "/nix/store/bv62k5yl7jwzkhyci838ir3vgz59gqsa-ff_native-messaging-hosts/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts" ".mozilla/native-messaging-hosts" To see the problem, here is the resulting directory tree:

.mozilla
├── [...]
└── native-messaging-hosts
    └── passff.json -> ../../../share/passff-host/passff.json

Obviously this symlink doesn't go anywhere. lndir created a broken symlink. To fix this, add the -ignorelinks argument to lndir, which causes it to instead just create a symlink to the symlink in ff_native-messaging-hosts:

.mozilla
├── [...]
└── native-messaging-hosts
    └── passff.json -> /nix/store/bv62k5yl7jwzkhyci838ir3vgz59gqsa-ff_native-messaging-hosts/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/passff.json

Checklist

• [ ] Change is backwards compatible. (I'm honestly not 100% sure on this one)

• [x] Code formatted with ./format.

• [x] Code tested through nix-shell --pure tests -A run.all or nix develop --ignore-environment .#all using Flakes.

• [ ] Test cases updated/added. See example.

• [x] Commit messages are formatted like

  {component}: {description}
  
  {long description}
  

  See CONTRIBUTING for more information and recent commit messages for examples.

• If this PR adds a new module

  • [ ] Added myself as module maintainer. See example.

Maintainer CC

@rycee @kira-bruneau @Lillecarl @mlyxshi

[Lillecarl]

This comes back to bite again!

       -ignorelinks
              Causes  the  program to not treat symbolic links in fromdir spe-
              cially.  The link created in todir will point back to the corre-
              sponding  (symbolic  link) file in fromdir.  If the link is to a
              directory, this is almost certainly the wrong thing.

              This option exists mostly to emulate the behavior the C  version
              of lndir had in X11R6.  Its use is not recommended.

@Luflosi For another native messenger i changed the package to copy the files instead of symlinking within the package. While it's not "pretty" and duplicates some kilobytes of data it worked just fine. Considering the "It's use is not recommended" mention and how wide the blast radius of this change is, I'd try that option first even though it's not "covering all bases".

https://gist.github.com/Lillecarl/1e4669bd7546eed5cdfcea900fa1c64e <- nixpkgs patch

final: prev: {
  passff-host = prev.passff-host.overrideAttrs (pattrs: {
    installPhase = ''
      substituteInPlace bin/${version}/passff.json \
        --replace PLACEHOLDER $out/share/passff-host/passff.py

      install -Dt $out/share/passff-host \
        bin/${version}/passff.{py,json}

      nativeMessagingPaths=(
        /lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts
        /etc/opt/chrome/native-messaging-hosts
        /etc/chromium/native-messaging-hosts
        /etc/vivaldi/native-messaging-hosts
        /lib/librewolf/native-messaging-hosts
      )

      for manifestDir in "''${nativeMessagingPaths[@]}"; do
        install -d $out$manifestDir
        cp $out/share/passff-host/passff.json $out$manifestDir/
      done
    '';
  });
}

You could also try this (untested) overlay.

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