nixos/networkmanager: make all plugins optional

[lovesegfault]

Motivation for this change

This solves an issue with the current NetworkManager module where it's
impossible to use it on a system with environment.noXlibs = true due
to failures in some plugin builds.

Moreover, these are entirely optional and not crucial to having NM
working and I suspect most don't really need all, possibly any, of these
that were built-in.

I also attempted to clean up plugin-related side effects that weren't
within an "if cfg..." guard, again to minimize the default footprint of
the NM module.

Things done

• Tested using sandboxing (nix.useSandbox on NixOS, or option sandbox in nix.conf on non-NixOS linux)
• Built on platform(s)
  • NixOS
  • macOS
  • other Linux distributions
• Tested via one or more NixOS test(s) if existing and applicable for the change (look inside nixos/tests)
• Tested compilation of all pkgs that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review wip"
• Tested execution of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• Determined the impact on package closure size (by running nix path-info -S before and after)
• Ensured that relevant documentation is up to date
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

Unsure how I should test this, tagging my usual review frens: @worldofpeace @cole-h @flokli @andir

[lovesegfault]

Missed @jtojnar since they're on the FreeDesktop team too.

[cole-h]

Wording nits.

[jtojnar]

What error does it produce with noXlibs?

[lovesegfault]

@jtojnar https://gist.github.com/70307b66431dbba4d125ae48f3f060cc

This is one, others fail too with the same error.

[jtojnar]

I think we might even just remove the VPN plug-ins from basePackages and let users install the VPN providers manually to netowrk-manager.packages. And using passthru to let users know what files to link to environment.etc and tmpfiles.d (I think there should be a way to make these unnecessary but we can leave that for the future.)

[lovesegfault]

In the current state this PR already removes all VPN plugins from the (now-gone) basePackages. they get added and configured conditionally on their respective options.

I think this is superior, even if more repetitive on our end, then making the user fiddle with passthru.

[jtojnar]

Maintainer would set the passthru for each plug-in and user would just use netowrk-manager.packages = [ nm-foovpn … ];.

[jtojnar]

Re: tmpfiles.d #40594

[worldofpeace]

I kinda like that @jtojnar. But the thing here with making them all optional, they're currently all off by default and that's going to break existing setups that might have relied on it. So we'd have to add a default set to network-manager.packages, and I guess some sort of excludedPackages thing, with all the default plugins in relatedPackages so users know which one's are there default.

I think having the plugins in a list would make sense.
Should we name it network-manager.plugins?

But if we decide to have an option per plugin, we need to have all the plugins that were in basePackages to be default true.

[jtojnar]

I do not see a problem with changing defaults, as long as it is properly documented in release notes. We should not have made the option so fat by default in the first place.

[flokli]

If it doesn't get too verbose to use, I'd also prefer having a list like network-manager.[packages|plugins] over adding tons of options.

👍 on @jtojnar - we can ship less plugins by defaults, if it's properly covered in the release notes.

[worldofpeace]

I disapprove of this because it isn't a seamless transition. Usually if someone has something installed or configured they'd want this to stay that way. Not to mention we'd probably cause users headache's on nixos-unstable.

This PR will also have to re-add the disabled plugins for many of the desktop manager's that make inferences that these plugins are already there.

[worldofpeace]

But as mentioned by @jtojnar, we have to add information to the respective packages in passthru that is done intricately here already.

[flokli]

I'm not so sure about these two comments.

• I think doing these changes is fine if they're documented in the release notes.
• Desktop Environments like plasma and gnome shell could add them (and even if they wouldn't, I think they kinda enumerate the available plugins installed)

[stale]

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[flokli]

I think a smaller variant of networkmanager would be useful - like having a headless system, but with NetworkManager as a network manager.

We could ensure "common desktop workloads" still work as expected by enabling the plugins from the desktop environments.

[lovesegfault]

I'm abandoning this for now. Should still be fixed in the future.

[nixos-discourse]

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/networkmanager-plugins-installed-by-default/39682/8