Integration rtx with launchctl / macOS GUI apps

[eproxus]

I have perhaps a peculiar use-case (although it shouldn't be too uncommon):

I start GUI apps like Sublime Text, that needs access to rtx-managed versions for e.g. LSP functionality. When using asdf I could statically add ~/.asdf/shims and ~/.asdf/bin to the launchctl path which would make GUI apps just use whatever was globally activated with asdf.

However, with rtx there is no such static path. Setting the launchctl path can only be done manually and after which the Dock (!) in macOS has to be restarted (or you have to log out and in again). Obviously this is not realistic to use, because as soon as you've upgraded your globally configure version of a tool the old configured path would be out of date.

What would be a practical way to solve this with rtx? Maintain some kind of symlink on shell startup, like the global ~/.asdf/shims?

[eproxus]

Would it be too much to ask of rtx to symlink path like ~/.local/share/rtx/installs/<lang>/global/bin whenever the global version is changed?

[jdx]

this isn't necessary, we can create shims that don't need to know the version since they call rtx exec. rtx exec will automatically use the correct version of the runtime based on $PWD.

[jdx]

I'm opposed to using shims in the general case. They solve some problems like this, but they come with a ton of baggage. At some point though it may make sense to add the ability for rtx to generate shims and I think it could work for some alternative use-cases like this.

This isn't high on my priority though, but you could write your own shims really easily:

bash-5.2$ ~/.rtx/shims/node -v
v18.13.0
bash-5.2$ mkdir -p ~/.rtx/shims
bash-5.2$ cat >~/.rtx/shims/node <<EOF
#!/usr/bin/env bash
exec rtx exec -- node "\$@"
EOF
bash-5.2$ chmod +x ~/.rtx/shims/node
bash-5.2$ ~/.rtx/shims/node -v
v18.13.0

You'll need to do this for each binary you want to support though.

Alternatively, we are doing basically the exact same thing as direnv, so you could also fork the direnv extension for whatever IDE you're using and make it work for RTX: https://github.com/misuzu/direnv-subl

[jdx]

look at the rtx readme for setting up the use rtx direnv extension

[jdx]

btw your shim needs to look like this:

exec rtx exec -- "$(basename $0)" "$@"

the quotes on the first probably won't matter (add them anyways for consistency though), but they are required on the second if you have any arguments with spaces in them

[eproxus]

look at the rtx readme for setting up the use rtx direnv extension

I did follow all instructions related to direnv. But the shims fit my workflow much more, since I want to continue to use RTX in the shell and not replace everything with direnv.

[jdx]

oh I think I understand, did you mean that you couldn't use the direnv sublime plugin because it didn't work with the extension?

[eproxus]

I guess so. I have it enabled, I run LSP and can run Troubleshoot Server but don't see an updated path there, unfortunately (no idea if it is supposed to work, could also be something with the LSP plug-in I suppose).

[jdx]

btw if you control which binary it uses, say you're calling launchctl and you want it to use the right python, then just use rtx exec -- python instead of python.

[jdx]

this just isn't likely to work for something like a LSP in an IDE because you can't actually change this

[amoosbr]

Update (2023-03-07): Since the introduction of experimental shim support, I use them for potential IDE needs. The script mentioned below is no longer used.

I created a small helper tool for me to create symlinked PATHS for my global tool binaries.
More or less the following lines for every global tool:

global_symlink_dir="$HOME/opt/global-path-symlinks"
# Python
python_base="$global_symlink_dir/python"
mkdir -p "$python_base"
ln -snf "$(rtx where python)/bin" "$python_base/bin"

In the PATH, I can then use: /Users/user/opt/global-path-symlinks/python/bin:

In general, it is sufficient for me, that apps just have this global version available.
The script is quite simple and not fully automated, but sufficient for my usage. It's available in this gist, if someone wants to look at it.

With this solution, I only need to update the launchctl path, when a tool is added or removed from my global tool list.

[jdx]

@amoosbr I'm curious what you think of #92. I think the current behavior actually works well for your particular use-case. (rtx which python will either use the version specified in .tool-versions OR the latest installed if none specified).