dot.me VS Home Manager using Nix

You can see https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/tree/master/x11 for more, but that is the important part.

In case it helps, you can see my configs for both in my dot files: https://github.com/podiki/dot.me I recently did a lot with my Stump config as I was energized by returning to it, doing things I didn't realize I could do before. It does need cleaning up now.

I have a similar setup to what you are asking about, I think. I haven't migrated everything to org-mode, but many are. You can see my dotfiles here: https://github.com/podiki/dot.me

So you should be able to have just about everything in user profiles/manifests and probably it is a search path here not being exported. If it is helpful, I have my config stuff here https://github.com/podiki/dot.me (see the guix and zsh directories specifically)

I better get right on it! If you are curious, you can see my current Guix config here [0], though not very commented. But those files (combined with the rest of my dot files) would reproduce this system configuration.

[0] https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/tree/master/guix/.config

I use org-mode to generate my file (see https://github.com/podiki/dot.me for all of them), with the main emacs org file weighing in at 72K or 1,865 lines (woah, it got long). While my .emacs file that will load this file is just 5.8K or 106 lines. I've been using, and customizing, emacs for a while...

Personally, I use git [0] along with GNU stow [1], combined with making the files directly from a literate Readme.org (e.g. [2]). I sync this repository between machines to update files, and when I make changes in the org-mode Readme file it automatically generates the new file. There are ways to pull in changes made to that file directly, but haven't needed to do that. My repo doesn't have the full details, but if you want to see it in action along with a few links and pointers, do take a look at [0]. I really like having it all together in one place, and with org-mode everything is very (human) readable.

[0] https://github.com/podiki/dot.me

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/

[2] https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/blob/master/x11/README.org

I have it running with a very similar setup (same picom fork, XMonad, nvidia, xinitrc), which you can see here, in case it helps: https://github.com/podiki/dot.me

STOW is great, it is simple and works well especially combined with git. That's what I do [0], and recently combined it with org-mode for literate programming, so each program has just a README.org that then generates all the files via org tangle [1] [2]. For example, here is my file that generates my Xorg configuration [3] over several files, nicely readable on GitHub, in Emacs, or just as plain text.

[0] https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190924102437/https://expoundit...

[2] https://orgmode.org/manual/Working-with-Source-Code.html

[3] https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/tree/master/x11

It's probably overkill for what you are trying to do. But I have been using home-manager [0] as a way to quickly restore my working environment.

[0] https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/

$ home-manager --version 23.05 $ nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-23.11.tar.gz home-manager $ nix-channel --update $ nix-shell '' -A install [...] All done! The home-manager tool should now be installed and you can edit /home/MY-USERNAME/.config/home-manager/home.nix to configure Home Manager. Run 'man home-configuration.nix' to see all available options. $ home-manager --version 23.05

Unfortunately until we find more volunteers in this area, it is hard to see status quo changing. See also https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/607 and this ongoing project https://github.com/pjones/plasma-manager

> Channels are, AFAIU, a reference to some point-in-time/commit/version of nixpkgs

It's not specifically nixpkgs, but any Nix code generally.

Per the Nix manual[0]:

> Channels are a mechanism for referencing remote Nix expressions and conveniently retrieving their latest version.

e.g. home-manager's suggested channel is just the github tarball for the relevant branch[1]:

  nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz home-manager

It sounds like you'd benefit a lot from Nix/NixOS [1], if not just home-manager[2].

1. https://nixos.org/

2. https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz home-manager nix-channel --update nix-shell '' -A install

I'm using flakes and home manager and not really sure how to go about managing my neovim configuration. I've read through some other posts, github issues, and various articles trying to suss out a good way to do this. Reading through other people's configs and posts was somewhat helpful but there is a lot going on I don't understand and everyone's examples I've seen vary wildly.

Said store path contains the home-manager repo. After the home-manager run, the store path is recreated.

I can't answer all your questions, but home-manager does have a dconf module that would probably be better to use than that external tool. Everything inside the options block are the things you can pass to the dconf module.