Nix/Home Manager flake configuration

This repository contains my personal Nix/Home Manager configuration. I currently use Nix mainly in Home Manager and am very happy with it.

Main features:

• Each machine has the same command line tools with the same configuration (zsh, starship, git, ...)
• Shared command history between multiple machines thanks to atuin

I tried using nix-darwin and NixOS, but at the moment they don't bring much value to me. I work with Python a lot, in various team structures, and for now I want to keep using regular virtual environments for my Python projects, which seems like a hassle in NixOS. Thanks to nix-darwin I can now do sudo using Touch ID on my Macbook, but I don't use it for much else.

Note to self: adding a new linux machine

nix --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' run home-manager/master -- --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' switch --flake .#simon-linux
atuin login

Very basic steps to set this up yourself

Setting this up can be a bit confusing. Nix will build all of its own packages in /nix and symlink them to the right place. It will also create config files like "~/.zshrc". The nix language is often described as "json with functions". The docs and examples can sometimes be confusing. For me the deterministic and portable nature of my home directory is worth the learning curve. It's quite a cool system!

• Install Nix: https://nixos.org/download/
• Create a new folder and initialiase home-manager: nix --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' run home-manager/master -- init --switch
• Add your configuration (similar to flake.nix and shared/home.nix from this repository)
• Enable your configuration: home-manager switch --flake .#<config-name> (in my case config-name is either simon-darwin or simon-linux)
• You will probably get some errors that either tell you what to do or you can solve them by googling (e.g. needing to run the command with --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' the first time or that you need to move ~/.zshrc because it will now be managed by home-manager)

Links that helped me

• Setting up your dotfiles with home-manager as a flake · Chris Portela
• home-manager
• Nix language basics — nix.dev documentation
• Flakes - NixOS Wiki
• GitHub - dminca/nix-config: My Nix configuration for setting up aarch64-darwin & x86_64-darwin workstations
• Github - Code search results - "path:home.nix"