nixpkgs VS home-manager

I’ve found it most helpful to review other people’s configurations to learn Nix.

Some specific ones I really like:

https://github.com/malob/nixpkgs

https://github.com/fufexan/dotfiles

I keep a not comprehensive GitHub Stars list of Nix stuff I find here if you want more:

https://github.com/stars/heywoodlh/lists/nix

If you aren’t familiar, Nix-Darwin allows you to codify your MacOS deployments in a fashion comparable to NixOS. As a huge Nix-Darwin user myself, I have found malob’s repo extremely helpful for ideas with MacOS configuration. Nix-Darwin has made me so happy as a MacOS user. :)

Some other unsolicited tips:

1. Start with Nix flakes for configuration

2. Invest in Home-Manager before NixOS or Nix-Darwin

3. Ask people for help in Matrix or Discourse — my experience is that Nix-related folk are very welcoming and understanding

Good luck!

I don't think system.autoUpgrade will work at all with flakes since you'd need to update your flake lock file for anything to get updated. I've seen a way to do that automatically with github actions here.

https://github.com/malob/nixpkgs/discussions/6 (discussion on how to bootstrap a Flake file on Darwin)

I really am at lost rn, foud this github issue tried the solution and it didn't work.

{ config, pkgs, ... }: { imports = [ (import "${builtins.fetchTarball https://github.com/rycee/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz}/nixos") ]; users.users = { jdoe = { isNormalUser = true; initialPassword = "1234"; extraGroups = [ "wheel" ]; }; }; home-manager.useUserPackages = true; home-manager.users.jdoe = { home.stateVersion = "21.11"; programs.home-manager.enable = true; programs.git.userName = "John"; programs.git.userEmail = "Doe"; programs.zsh.zplug = { enable = true; plugins = [ { name = "zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions"; } { name = "romkatv/powerlevel10k"; tags = [ as:theme depth:1 ]; } { name = "ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh oh-my-zsh"; } { name = "ajeetdsouza/zoxide"; } { name = "marlonrichert/zsh-autocomplete"; } { name = "marlonrichert/zsh-edit"; } { name = "zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions"; } { name = "ptavares/zsh-exa"; } { name = "zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting"; } { name = "mbenford/zsh-tmux-auto-title"; } { name = "zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search"; } ]; }; services.gpg-agent = { enable = true; defaultCacheTtl = 1800; enableSshSupport = true; }; }; }

There are multiple ways of managing declarative profiles. 1) Attrset, compatible with imperative use of nix-env https://git.io/fAQHW ; 2) buildEnv, providing more control over the paths that are linked into the profile https://git.io/fp0aU ; 3) home-manager, providing nixos-like config for your ~ https://github.com/rycee/home-manager