Perhaps dumb questions inbound ;)

I use Arch because I'm strapped for time and my system is always moving.

• 2 minutes to install something? AUR probably has it.

• Ten minutes of free time to look for a software that fits a new need? Try random AUR things (auditing PKGBUILDs is just twenty seconds or so).

• If I need a tiny patch, I'll just add a sed or patch file to the PKGBUILD. (Super easy, you barely learn any syntax cuz it's intuitive shell.)

• make && make install/meson blahblah usually just works.

• Wiki does the thinking for me if I need something special (e.g. hw video acceleration)

Buuuut update surprises can be a pain (e.g. Pipewire explodes Saturday evening) and declarative rollbackable immutability sounds really freakin' AWESOME, so I'm considering NixOS for my new laptop (old one's webcam broke). So I ask:

• How much can I grok in a week?
  • I need to know Nixlang, right? I have a ton of dotfiles and random homemade cpp commands in ~/.local/bin that I use daily
• How quick is it to make a derivation?
  • I make install a lot, do I need to declare that due to non-FHS? Can I boilerplate the whole thing with someone else's make install and ctrl+c ctrl+v? How does genAI fare? (Lemmy hates word guess bots, I know)
• How quick is it to install something new and random?
  • Do I just use nix-shell if I need something asap? Do I need to make a derivation for all my programs? e.g. do I need to declare a Hyprland plugin I'm test-running?
• How long do you research a new package for?
  • On Gentoo I always looked up USE flags (NOO my time); on Arch I just audit the PKGBUILD and test-run it (20 seconds); on Ubuntu I had to find the relevant PPA (2 minutes). What's it like for Nix?
• Can you set up dev environments quickly or do you need to write a ton of configs?
  • I hear python can be annoying. Do C++/Android Studio have header file/etc. issues?
• What maintenance ouchies do you run into? How long to rectify?
• Do I need to finagle on my own to have /boot encrypted?
  • I boot via: unencrypted EFI grub asks for LUKS password -> decrypt /boot, which then has a keyfile -> decrypt and mount btrfs root partition. But lots of guides don't do it this way

Thanks for bearing with me ദ്ദി(｡•̀ヮ<)~✩‧₊

I had a teeny pet project using GNU assembly that was going to target two platforms.

Instead of keeping my handwritten worst-practices Makefile I decided to try GNU Autotools for the educated reasons of:

• Text scrolling by looks pretty
• Vague memories of ./configure make make install tarballs

I got hit with mysterious macro errors, recompile with -fPIE errors (didn't need this before?), autotools trying to run gcc on a .o file w/ the same options as an .s file, "no rule for all:", and other things a noob would run into. (I don't need a bugfix, since my handspun Makefile is "working on my machine" with uname -m.) So there's a bit of a learning curve here, inhibited by old documentation ~and~ ~more~ ~quietly,~ ~genAI~ ~being~ ~shittier~ ~than~ ~normal~ ~in~ ~this~ ~department~

With this I ask:

Do people still use Autotools for non-legacy stuff? If not, what do people choose for a new project's build system and why?

edit: trimmed an aside

What was your last RTFM adventure? Tinker this, read that, make something smoother! Or explodier.

As for me, I wanted to see how many videos I could run at once. (Answer: 60 frames per second or 60 frames per second?)

With my sights on GPUizing some ethically sourced motion pictures, I RTFW, graphed, and slapped on environment variables and flags like Lego bricks. I got the Intel VAAPI thingamabob to jaunt by (and found that it butterized my mpv videos)

$ pacman -S blahblahblahblahblahtfm
$ mpv --show-profile=fast
Profile fast: 
 scale=bilinear
 dscale=bilinear
 dither=no
 correct-downscaling=no
 linear-downscaling=no
 sigmoid-upscaling=no
 hdr-compute-peak=no
 allow-delayed-peak-detect=yes
$ mpv --hwdec=auto --profile=fast graphwar-god-4KEDIT.mp4
# fucking silk

But there was no pleasure without pain: Mr. Maxwell F. N. 940MX (the N stands for Nvidia) played hooky. So I employed the longest envvars ever

$ NVD_LOG=1 VDPAU_TRACE=2 VDPAU_NVIDIA_DEBUG=3 NVD_BACKEND=direct NVD_GPU=nvidia LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia VDPAU_DRIVER=nvidia prime-run vdpauinfo
GPU at BusId 0x1 doesn't have a supported video decoder
Error creating VDPAU device: 1
# stfu

to try translating Nvidia VDPAU to VAAPI -- of course, here I realized I rtfmed backwards and should've tried to use just VDPAU instead. So I did.

Juice was still not acquired.

Finally, after a voracious DuckDuckGoing (quacking?), I was then blessed with the freeing knowledge that even though post-Kepler is supposed to support H264, Nvidia is full of lies...

 ______
< fudj >
 ------
          \   ‘^----^‘
           \ (◕(‘人‘)◕)
              (  8    )        ô
              (    8  )_______( )
              ( 8      8        )
              (_________________)
                ||          ||
               (||         (||

and then right before posting this, gut feeling: I can't read.

$ lspci | grep -i nvidia
... NVIDIA Corporation GM108M [GeForce 940MX] (rev a2)
# ArchWiki says that GM108 isn't supported.
# Facepalm

SO. What was your last RTFM adventure?

I have a little helper command in ~/.zshrc called stfu.

stfu() {
    if [ -z "$1" ]; then
        echo "Usage: stfu <program> [arguments...]"
        return 1
    fi

    nohup "$@" &>/dev/null &
    disown
}
complete -W "$(ls /usr/bin)" stfu

stfu will run some other command but also detach it from the terminal and make any output shut up. I use it for things such as starting a browser from the terminal without worrying about CTRL+Z, bg, and disown.

$ stfu firefox -safe-mode
# Will not output stuff to the terminal, and
# I can close the terminal too.

Here’s my issue:

On the second argument and above, when I hit tab, how do I let autocomplete suggest me the arguments and command line switches for the command I’m passing in?

e.g. stfu ls -<tab> should show me whatever ls’s completion function is, rather than listing every /usr/bin command again.

# Intended completion
$ stfu cat -<TAB>
-e                      -- equivalent to -vE                                                                                                                                                     
--help                  -- display help and exit                                                                                                                                                 
--number            -n  -- number all output lines                                                                                                                                               
--number-nonblank   -b  -- number nonempty output lines, overrides -n                                                                                                                            
--show-all          -A  -- equivalent to -vET                                                                                                                                                    
--show-ends         -E  -- display $ at end of each line                                                                                                                                         
--show-nonprinting  -v  -- use ^ and M- notation, except for LFD and TAB                                                                                                                         
--show-tabs         -T  -- display TAB characters as ^I                                                                                                                                          
--squeeze-blank     -s  -- suppress repeated empty output lines                                                                                                                                  
-t                      -- equivalent to -vT                                                                                                                                                     
-u                      -- ignored  

# Actual completion
$ stfu cat <tab>
...a list of all /usr/bin commands
$ stfu cat -<tab>
...nothing, since no /usr/bin commands start with -

(repost, prev was removed)

EDIT: Solved.

I needed to set the curcontext to the second word. Below is my (iffily annotated) zsh implementation, enjoy >:)

stfu() {
  if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo "Usage: stfu <program> [arguments...]"
    return 1
  fi

  nohup "$@" &>/dev/null &
  disown
}
#complete -W "$(ls /usr/bin)" stfu
_stfu() {
  # Curcontext looks like this:
  #   $ stfu <tab>
  #   :complete:stfu:
  local curcontext="$curcontext" 
  #typeset -A opt_args # idk what this does, i removed it

  _arguments \
    '1: :_command_names -e' \
    '*::args:->args'

  case $state in
    args)
      # idk where CURRENT came from
      if (( CURRENT > 1 )); then
        # $words is magic that splits up the "words" in a shell command.
        #   1. stfu
        #   2. yourSubCommand
        #   3. argument 1 to that subcommand
        local cmd=${words[2]}
        # We update the autocompletion curcontext to
        # pay attention to your subcommand instead
        curcontext="$cmd"

        # Call completion function
        _normal
      fi
      ;;
  esac
}
compdef _stfu stfu

Deduced via docs (look for The Dispatcher), this dude's docs, stackoverflow and overreliance on ChatGPT.

EDIT: Best solution (Andy)

stfu() {
  if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo "Usage: stfu <program> [arguments...]"
    return 1
  fi

  nohup "$@" &>/dev/null &
  disown
}
_stfu () {
  # shift autocomplete to right
  shift words
  (( CURRENT-=1 ))
  _normal
}
compdef _stfu stfu