Possible to return results twice in one script?

[guttermonk]

I have an update checker and was thinking it'd be cool if it would show an icon indicating when it's updating, and then either show that the system is up to date or that there are pending updates.

After testing a script to try this out, it looks like waybar stops at the first set of results (i.e. the "updating" text, alt, and tooltip) and never loads the second set of results.

Is there a way to pull this off with waybar, or could this be a potentially new feature?

[JimJ92120]

@guttermonk are you referring to your https://github.com/guttermonk/waybar-nixos-updates ?
Otherwise, can you share what you've got so far (module + script)?

[guttermonk]

That's correct, I'd like to make some updates to waybar-nixos-updates.

The waybar module wouldn't change and I was thinking something like this for the script (still haven't gotten it working though):

#!/usr/bin/env bash

STATE_FILE="$HOME/.cache/nix-update-state"

# Initialize variables
alt="has-updates"
tooltip="Checking for updates"

# Read from state file if it exists
if [ -f "$STATE_FILE" ]; then
    updates=$(cat "$STATE_FILE")
else
    updates=0
fi

# Output initial state
echo "{ \"text\":\"$updates\", \"alt\":\"$alt\", \"tooltip\":\"$tooltip\" }"

# Then perform the update check
updates="$(cd ~/.config/nixos && nix flake lock --no-update-lock-file && nix build .#nixosConfigurations.$(hostname).config.system.build.toplevel --no-write-lock-file --no-link && nvd diff /run/current-system ./result | grep -e '\[U' | wc -l)"

# Save the update count to state file
echo "$updates" > "$STATE_FILE"

# Set appropriate alt and tooltip based on results
if [ "$updates" -ne 0 ]; then
  alt="has-updates"
  tooltip=$(cd ~/.config/nixos && nvd diff /run/current-system ./result | grep -e '\[U' | awk '{ for (i=3; i<NF; i++) printf $i " "; if (NF >= 3) print $NF; }' ORS='\\n' )
else  
  alt="updated"
  tooltip="System updated"
fi

# Output the final result
echo "{ \"text\":\"$updates\", \"alt\":\"$alt\", \"tooltip\":\"$tooltip\" }"

[JimJ92120]

Is your script running correctly if you run it manually? (e.g different output during and after update)

Have you set the interval correctly in your custom/module?

[guttermonk]

When I run that script in terminal, I get the following output:

{ "text":"", "alt":"has-updates", "tooltip":"Checking for updates" }
{ "text":"0", "alt":"updated", "tooltip":"System updated" }

I have the interval set how I normally have it, but it never makes it to the second set of results. I haven't seen any other waybar modules use multiple outputs, so not sure if it's even possible.

[JimJ92120]

any errors in waybar log?

[guttermonk]

I checked waybar -l debug and didn't see any errors. Is there a log file somewhere? I wasn't able to find one.

[JimJ92120]

you cant try journalctl | grep waybar

things i could think of to check would be:

• waybar may run your script in a different shell environment
• try watch -n1 ./path/to/script (that simulates running the script at interval)
• try with a dummy script to see if things change accordingly (e.g print current datetime)

[guttermonk]

Got it working. See the latest release of https://github.com/guttermonk/waybar-nixos-updates