nix-gui VS direnv

This is pretty close https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui

Nix based aiming at beginners. If it combines/works with https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui, then an amazing distro may be created. It would be user friendly, but also extremely powerful, allowing basically everything to be configured via the gui. Both softwares are alpha state, but I am excited to see what they bring.

Maybe https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui? I dunno if it can do userspace config though.

Would it make sense to integrate something like nix gui into this?

I remember when I first started using NixOS, as a confused beginner I tried to find a graphical application to manage and edit my configuration. I stumbled upon Nix-Gui, however, I didn’t really like the look, it crashed a fair amount, and I never really figured out how to use it. That said, their idea and all of the hard work they put into their project inspired me to make a similar application that focuses more on simplicity and ease of use.

I was wondering if you are aware of https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui and how your tool compares to it

There is also a GUI in development, hopefully it will help casual users in the future.

There's https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui for a gui like experience.

Configuration language usage: Probably a major win for programmers, but a major negative for non-programmers. However, nix-gui has shown that there's potential for gui-based nixos configuration. And this might one day be extended to use as part of the graphical installer. https://discourse.nixos.org/t/why-is-there-no-installer-for-nixos/16644/21. Since nix can be serialized and deserialized to json, there's actually a fair amount of interoperability able to be done to manipulate nix configuration using existing libraries.

I also made the export diff configurable, motivated by this post: https://github.com/direnv/direnv/pull/1233

Nice.

For years I've been using [direnv](https://direnv.net/) for this, setting environment variables which git picks up. This looks like a more feature complete equivalent, although to be honest I only really need switching of committer email and the SSH key used.

Direnv, for the uninitiated, loads and unloads environment variables when directories are entered and exited. Under every project folder there is a `$PROJ_DIR/.envrc` which contains:

buffer-env: A pure-Elisp version of the direnv utility. Useful to make Emacs aware of Python virtualenvs (which, judging by the questions posted here, is unfortunately still a complication for a lot of people). Similar to (and inspired by) envrc, but doesn't require the direnv program.

You can look at direnv to see this in action as they wrote shell hooks that get loaded into the shell profile and are executed on every prompt. https://direnv.net/

Yes, most Nix users employ https://direnv.net or the equivalent for your IDE of choice. Emacs for instance has https://github.com/purcell/envrc which set per-buffer variables.

The more applications I write, the more I tend to avoid typical config files in favor of using direnv [0] to set environment variables.

[0] https://direnv.net/