rust-overlay VS Home Manager using Nix

I'm trying to understand overlays in order to make a proper rustup install (I've read that this overlay is the best way to go).

real-world example: https://github.com/oxalica/rust-overlay/blob/master/flake.nix

In this language context specifically, if one wanted to manage their workspace with Nix I would reach for Riff and/or oxalica/rust-overlay first, since they are deliberately more aware of Rust-specific nuance. In the latter's case it has compatibility paths with rustup-toolchain files as well, for allowing your peers who can't or won't adopt Nix to continue to feel like first-class participants in the project. Another alternative I don't have experience with would be nix-community/fenix.

p.s. I'm not sure if it's mentioned much of anywhere, but it'd be neat if there was a way to figure out the appropriate cargo from a rust-toolchain/rust-toolchain.toml if present, ala https://github.com/oxalica/rust-overlay. Funnily enough 95% of my development time is in Rust, but I don't actually have it installed globally, fun times being a NixOS user. I'd definitely make the argument that cargo is an external dependency!

Many of us have moved to https://github.com/oxalica/rust-overlay over Mozilla's overlay.

We added rust-overlay, so we can easily specify different rust versions without relying on nixpkgs to give us what ever rust version in there.

If it's Rust, you can use https://github.com/oxalica/rust-overlay to get any version you want very easily without pinning an instance of nixpkgs just for it.

asdf does not allow you to keep three different versions of the same language, so I'm not sure how that compares? It's not super-trivial to do in Nix, but at least you can do it.

asdf is also no different than Nix when it comes to minor/major versions. You're at the mercy of what the plugin does, other than that you have to create your own plugin from scratch or make a fork. Nix has the option to patch things up more easily at least.

How does this compare to https://github.com/oxalica/rust-overlay/ ? Can fenix ingest a rust-toolchain file and provide packages from it?

Can you say a bit about how this compares to oxalica’s rust overlay?

I frequently try to do something, say use (from the README of rust overlay):

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.