steam: init with option to install adwaita theme

[brckd]

This adds the steam module and its adwaitaForSteam.enable option, which installs Adwaita for Steam with the Stylix color palette. This is a slightly modifed version of #551 (comment) and resolves #551. Note that Adwaita for Steam is installed directly on the host system using an activation script.

Preview Adwaita for Steam with the Catppuccin Mocha theme applied by Stylix

@reedrw Are you OK with me using most parts of your suggested code here?

[brckd]

In case the uncontained nature of the activation script is a problem, I can try to implement the solution suggested in #551 (comment).

[trueNAHO]

@reedrw Are you OK with me using most parts of your suggested code here?

Ideally, their contribution should be acknowledged by specifying their Git credentials with a Co-authored-by: tag in the commit body.

[trueNAHO]

In case the uncontained nature of the activation script is a problem, I can try to implement the solution suggested in #551 (comment).

Is it possible to make this reproducible? ${lib.getExe pkgs.adwsteamgtk} --install does not sound very reproducible.

[brckd]

One could probably run this script in a stdenv and extract the relevant files, or better yet, extract them from the source repository.

[reedrw]

Extracting the necessary files from the source repo is definitely the best solution, as the activation hook hack isn't easily reversible should a user choose to disable it

[trueNAHO]

Agreed.

[reedrw]

Looking into the install script, it seems that the only file directly overwritten is library.css (located at ~/.local/share/Steam/steamui/css/library.css), while the stylesheets and custom colorscheme are copied directly from the source repo into ~/.local/share/Steam/steamui/adwaita. I think it should be possible to do everything besides library.css purely.

Running the install script in stdenv is quite easy, see proof of concept here:

pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation (self: {
  name = "Adwaita-for-Steam";
  version = "3.1";

  src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
    owner = "tkashkin";
    repo = "Adwaita-for-Steam";
    rev = "v${self.version}";
    sha256 = "sha256-V2Ps4jP7UeoXTY1q7gLbWVQW9WwUzMM6RPYUvNDAJ0I=";
  };

  buildInputs = with pkgs; [
    python3
  ];

  buildPhase = ''
    mkdir -p $out/steamui/css
    touch $out/steamui/css/library.css
    python3 install.py -t $out
  '';
});

I think running the install script in stdenv is a fairly good way to do things, as it will make it easy to customize the install parameters through our home-manager module

[brckd]

This looks perfect! It's both flexible by using the official CLI and it's isolated by being wrapped in a derivation. I'll try to integrate your solution into the stylix module tomorrow.

[reedrw]

it seems that the only file directly overwritten is library.css (located at ~/.local/share/Steam/steamui/css/library.css)

Even better, if this file goes missing, steam will just redownload the stock version, so it should be fine to let home-manager link this as well

Edit: nevermind. Steam will redownload library.css if it is a symlink

[brckd]

Edit: nevermind. Steam will redownload library.css if it is a symlink

Related comment tkashkin/Adwaita-for-Steam#120 (comment). I wonder if there is any way to circumvent this, like symlinking a read only parent directory to prevent steam from writing to it. Otherwise, the only option to uninstall the theme might be to run a script that removes the library.css whenever the theme is disabled.
Judging from tkashkin/Adwaita-for-Steam#120 it seems like overriding the file wasn't required before, but is now.

Edit: Symlinking parent directories seems to leave steam in a startup loop.

[brckd]

@reedw I found the reason this version wasn't working! It seems like the css/library.css file is padded to match the filesize of the same file generated by Steam. This isn't the case in the stdenv because the file generated by Steam isn't provided.
This is probably also the reason symlinking didn't work, because the symlink itself doesn't match the filesize of the original file. I will try if we can pad the symlink in the same way to circumvent Steam's check.

Edit: This doesn't seem possible because Home Manager can't read local files in pure evaluation.

[reedrw]

This is probably also the reason symlinking didn't work

Within bootstrap_log.txt (~/.local/share/Steam/logs/bootstrap_log.txt) I see the following line:

BVerifyInstalledFiles: bad symlink ( steamui/css/library.css -> /nix/store/qdi8s371hjx3c32avyygns388aflgyfk-home-manager-files/.local/share/Steam/steamui/css/library.css, expected non-symlink )

So I assume Steam is not happy with it being a symlink whatsoever

[brckd]

The only solution I can imagine is to run a specified version of steam to replicate the local configuration and then run the script in the same container.

[trueNAHO]

Any way we can conveniently patch Steam or wrap it:

wrapProgram $out/bin/steam \
  --please-work /nix/store/<HASH>-home-manager-files/.local/share/Steam/steamui/css/library.css

[brckd]

I'm not familiar with wrapProgram, so what I'm about to say may turn out completely wrong, but I think any attempt automating the generation of Steam's default theme will fail. AFAIK the theme is generated when the Steam GUI first starts up during the Updating Steam dialogue. Since the Steam binary lacks any CLI capabilities, it's impossible to reproducibly control this progress. The dialogue usually takes quite long as well. which would make automating it very inefficient. We would probably have to start Steam and listen for when the theme file is created to stop the application again.

[brckd]

I just found this useful information.

Every time you start Steam, it checks the integrity of every file and re-downloads files that have been changed.
To prevent this, add the -noverifyfiles and -norepairfiles flags to your steam shortcut

Sadly this was the only documentation I found on Steam's CLI capabilities so far. But I was able to confirm that running steam -noverifyfiles -norepairfiles with a non-padded library.css file worked. This solution would successfully install and display the custom theme, but it will miss CSS declaration for components not covered by the custom theme, making the app less usable.

Edit: There is some useful information on Steam's CLI in https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Command_line_options#Steam

[brckd]

I'm not familiar with wrapProgram, so what I'm about to say may turn out completely wrong, but I think any attempt automating the generation of Steam's default theme will fail. AFAIK the theme is generated when the Steam GUI first starts up during the Updating Steam dialogue. Since the Steam binary lacks any CLI capabilities, it's impossible to reproducibly control this progress. The dialogue usually takes quite long as well. which would make automating it very inefficient. We would probably have to start Steam and listen for when the theme file is created to stop the application again.

Forget what I said, SteamCMD seems to be "updating Steam" the same way the GUI does. It even downloads the required theme files. This solves most of the problems I was pointing to. I only have to see if this works without logging in too.

Edit: Derivations don't have access to the internet so this doesn't work.

[brckd]

Edit: Derivations don't have access to the internet so this doesn't work.

What I meant by this is that SteamCMD, which is used to generate the library.css required by the theme, requires internet access to fetch its files. This is usually not possible in derivations, but as https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-do-i-access-internet-inside-nix-build/7671/5 suggests, we could use a fixed-output derivation. But this only works if the returned files always matches the same hash. Sounds like a plan, right?

[trueNAHO]

But this only works if the returned files always matches the same hash.

If we fetch an unpinned version, like the latest version, instead of a pinned version, this solution will inevitably break in the future.

Seems like Steam itself is the problem...

Sounds like a plan, right?

@danth, do you know how we could resolve this issue?