Post #1308438

2026-02-19 13:59 UTC

You'd roughly need to: - Figure out which program is currently focused - Figure out the Git repo of this software - Clone it into a temporary directory - Set up the required tools to start hacking on it and compile it As a quick prototype, I wrote a li'l Bash script that does some of these things. It makes heavy use of #nix and #nixpkgs: https://codeberg.org/blinry/view-source-button I enters a "dev shell" with the required tools already in the PATH, and even sets up a Git remote to start contributing. :D

Replies (4)

@blinry@chaos.social 2026-02-19 14:03

So if you've been wondering why I'm into obscure bugs this week like: - Figuring out why I'm missing icons in pavucontrol https://chaos.social/@blinry/116081436255395069 - Improving the man page of a Nix CLI helper https://github.com/nix-community/nh/pull/568 - Reporting broken shortcuts in the Firefox DevTools https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2017113 … it was testcases for tying out this "View Source Button". :P

Open ##1308440
@agowa338@chaos.social 2026-02-19 14:03

@blinry Or have the entire system built around being interpreted like Python or C#. Maybe C# would even be a better option as it's JIT compiler is better in my eyes. And it integrates better with that XML based GUI definition language Microsoft had. Edit: WPF XAML was it.

Open ##1308452
@korenchkin@chaos.social 2026-02-19 14:10

@blinry Might I suggest using `nix eval --raw nixpkgs#$PKG --apply 'pkg: …'` to avoid repeatedly invoking `nix eval`?

Open ##1308529
@HeptaSean@social.tchncs.de 2026-02-19 14:13

@blinry Not sure if I'm thinking too complicated here, but doesn't it get ever more complicated what exactly to show there? If I'm currently looking at a web app that shows some data retrieved from a server-side backend in a browser whose UI is written in (say) Python calling one of the dominant rendering engines and one of the dominant Javascript engines, which of the sources do I show on “View Source”? It could be anything from the operating system kernel via the CPython or the Javascript runtime to the web app or its server-side counter-part that could be considered most interesting and answering the question: “Oh, I wonder how this works.”

Open ##1308533