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Nix permits user level configurations through ~/.config/nix/nix.conf that allow customization of system-wide settings and behavior. This is beneficial in chroot environments and for per-user configurations. System level Nix configurations in the form of /etc/nix/nix.conf can be specified declaratively via the NixOS nix module but as of currently no counter part exists in home-manager. This PR is a port of the RFC42 implementation for the NixOS nix module[1] to home-manager. Non-applicable options have been excluded and the config generation backends have been tweaked to the backends offered by home-manager. A notable change from the NixOS module is a mandatory option to specify the Nix binary corresponding to the version "nix.conf" should be generated against. This is necessary because the validation phase is dependent on the `nix show-config` subcommand on the host platform. While it is possible to avoid validation entirely, the lack of type checking was deemed too significant. In NixOs, the version information can be retrieved from the `package` option itself which declares the Nix binary system-wide. However in home-manager, there is no pure way to detect the system Nix version and what state version the "nix.conf" should be generated against. Thus an option is used to overcome this limitation by forcing the user to specify the Nix package. Note this interaction can still be automated by forwarding the system-wide Nix package to the home-manager module if needed. Three unit tests were added to test the module behavior for the empty settings, the example settings and the example registry configurations respectively. [1] - NixOS/nixpkgs#139075
Home Manager using Nix
This project provides a basic system for managing a user environment using the Nix package manager together with the Nix libraries found in Nixpkgs. It allows declarative configuration of user specific (non global) packages and dotfiles.
Before attempting to use Home Manager please read the warning below.
For a more systematic overview of Home Manager and its available options, please see the Home Manager manual.
If you would like to contribute to Home Manager then please have a look at the contributing chapter of the manual.
Words of warning
Unfortunately, it is quite possible to get difficult to understand errors when working with Home Manager, such as infinite loops with no clear source reference. You should therefore be comfortable using the Nix language and the various tools in the Nix ecosystem. Reading through the Nix Pills document is a good way to familiarize yourself with them.
If you are not very familiar with Nix but still want to use Home Manager then you are strongly encouraged to start with a small and very simple configuration and gradually make it more elaborate as you learn.
In some cases Home Manager cannot detect whether it will overwrite a previous manual configuration. For example, the Gnome Terminal module will write to your dconf store and cannot tell whether a configuration that it is about to be overwritten was from a previous Home Manager generation or from manual configuration.
Home Manager targets NixOS unstable and NixOS version 21.11 (the current stable version), it may or may not work on other Linux distributions and NixOS versions.
Also, the home-manager tool does not explicitly support rollbacks at
the moment so if your home directory gets messed up you'll have to fix
it yourself. See the rollbacks section for instructions
on how to manually perform a rollback.
Now when your expectations have been built up and you are eager to try all this out you can go ahead and read the rest of this text.
Contact
You can chat with us on IRC in the channel #home-manager on OFTC. There is also a Matrix room, which is bridged to the IRC channel.
Installation
Home Manager can be used in three primary ways:
-
Using the standalone
home-managertool. For platforms other than NixOS and Darwin, this is the only available choice. It is also recommended for people on NixOS or Darwin that want to manage their home directory independently of the system as a whole. See Standalone installation in the manual for instructions on how to perform this installation. -
As a module within a NixOS system configuration. This allows the user profiles to be built together with the system when running
nixos-rebuild. See NixOS module installation in the manual for a description of this setup. -
As a module within a nix-darwin system configuration. This allows the user profiles to be built together with the system when running
darwin-rebuild. See nix-darwin module installation in the manual for a description of this setup.
Home Manager provides both the channel-based setup and the flake-based one. See Nix Flakes for a description of the flake-based setup.
Translations
Home Manager has basic support for internationalization through gettext. The translations are hosted by Weblate. If you would like to contribute to the translation effort then start by going to the Home Manager Weblate project.
Releases
Home Manager is developed against nixpkgs-unstable branch, which
often causes it to contain tweaks for changes/packages not yet
released in stable NixOS. To avoid breaking users' configurations,
Home Manager is released in branches corresponding to NixOS releases
(e.g. release-21.11). These branches get fixes, but usually not new
modules. If you need a module to be backported, then feel free to open
an issue.
License
This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.