From 8e33a7ba12088b88942269bee2aca0bf3d741134 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: rope <fredrik@nordhammer.it>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:23:10 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] theming: ghostty and btop read through the state symlink

Drops the copy step for both: a switch is now just the ln -sfn, so there
is no second write to fail and no stale copy to survive. Verified with
ghostty +show-config that retargeting the link alone changes the
effective background/foreground. Also log the applied theme per run.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 settings/theming.nix | 23 +++++++++++++++++++----
 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/settings/theming.nix b/settings/theming.nix
index 9e699d5..237a035 100644
--- a/settings/theming.nix
+++ b/settings/theming.nix
@@ -385,12 +385,18 @@ let
     theme="$1"
     [ -d "$theme" ] || exit 0
 
+    # One line per run, so the journal answers "did it fire, and with what?"
+    # without any guessing: journalctl --user -u quickshell | grep theme-apply
+    echo "theme-apply: $theme" >&2
+
     ln -sfn "$theme" ${lib.escapeShellArg stateLink}
 
+    # Only the files an app insists on finding at a fixed path get copied.
+    # Ghostty and btop are pointed straight at the state symlink instead
+    # (see the home-manager block below) — one less write to go wrong, and no
+    # way for a stale copy to survive a switch.
     install -Dm644 "$theme/gtk3.css"    "$HOME/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css"
     install -Dm644 "$theme/gtk4.css"    "$HOME/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css"
-    install -Dm644 "$theme/ghostty.conf" "$HOME/.config/ghostty/theme.conf"
-    install -Dm644 "$theme/btop.theme"  "$HOME/.config/btop/themes/runtime.theme"
     install -Dm644 "$theme/vesktop.css" "$HOME/.config/vesktop/settings/quickCss.css"
     install -Dm644 "$theme/zen.css"     "$HOME/${zenChrome}/userChrome.css"
 
@@ -500,9 +506,18 @@ in
         name = "Papirus-Fred";
       };
 
-      programs.ghostty.settings.config-file = "?${homeDir}/.config/ghostty/theme.conf";
+      # Both read straight through the state symlink, so a switch is nothing
+      # but the `ln -sfn` in theme-apply — no copy to fail, nothing stale.
+      #
+      # The leading `?` marks the include optional: before the first
+      # theme-apply of a fresh account the link does not exist yet, and
+      # without it ghostty treats that as a config error. Includes are also
+      # applied AFTER the file that names them, so these colours win over
+      # anything home-manager writes above.
+      programs.ghostty.settings.config-file = "?${stateLink}/ghostty.conf";
+      # Manual escape hatch; the switcher itself reloads over D-Bus.
       programs.ghostty.settings.keybind = [ "ctrl+shift+alt+f12=reload_config" ];
-      programs.btop.settings.color_theme = "${homeDir}/.config/btop/themes/runtime.theme";
+      programs.btop.settings.color_theme = "${stateLink}/btop.theme";
     };
   };
 }