home-files-service-type - naming restrictions?

home-files-service-type - naming restrictions?

[Paul Jewell via]

Good afternoon,

I have a home configuration which has worked without issue for some 
time, but now I wanted to add the configuration files for urxvt:

(home-environment
   (packages ...)
   (services
     (list
       ...
       (simple-service 'urxvt-config
         home-files-service-type
           (list `(".Xresources"
                   ,(local-file
                     "/home/paul/dotfiles/home/file/.Xresources")) 

                 `(".config/urxvt"
                   ,(local-file
                     "/home/paul/dotfiles/home/files/.config/urxvt")))))

I am getting the error:

guix home: error: invalid name: `.Xresources'

This leads me to three questions:
1. Is there a constraint on file naming with home-files-service-type?
2. If so, is there another mechanism I am supposed to use to create 
.Xresources?
3. So I can find my way through this type of problem in the future, is 
there some way I can see the source code to home-files-service-type 
apart from digging? For a package, I know I can use guix edit <pkg-name> 
to see the definition, but I can't see how to do this for 
home-files-service-type.

Thanks!

Re: home-files-service-type - naming restrictions?

[Paul Jewell via]

On 26/12/2022 14:53, Paul Jewell via wrote:
> Good afternoon,
>
> I have a home configuration which has worked without issue for some 
> time, but now I wanted to add the configuration files for urxvt:
>
> (home-environment
>   (packages ...)
>   (services
>     (list
>       ...
>       (simple-service 'urxvt-config
>         home-files-service-type
>           (list `(".Xresources"
>                   ,(local-file
>                     "/home/paul/dotfiles/home/file/.Xresources"))
>                 `(".config/urxvt"
>                   ,(local-file
> "/home/paul/dotfiles/home/files/.config/urxvt")))))
>
> I am getting the error:
>
> guix home: error: invalid name: `.Xresources'
>
> This leads me to three questions:
> 1. Is there a constraint on file naming with home-files-service-type?
> 2. If so, is there another mechanism I am supposed to use to create 
> .Xresources?
> 3. So I can find my way through this type of problem in the future, is 
> there some way I can see the source code to home-files-service-type 
> apart from digging? For a package, I know I can use guix edit 
> <pkg-name> to see the definition, but I can't see how to do this for 
> home-files-service-type.
>
> Thanks!
>
Turns out the problem is the leading fullstop in the .Xresources part of 
the filename string. If I rename the file with the leading point, and 
modify the file name string accordingly, it all works.

Is this a bug? I would expect any valid filename to be accepted in this 
context.

My next problem - xrdb isn't executed when I log into the session - 
guess I need to put this in one of the start up scripts!

Best regards,
Paul