Home-Manager Configuration

Minimal "Bootstrap" Installation

The following initialises a git repository from a flake template. The nix run will evaluate the configuration and activate it immediately. This is only thin, but opinionated convenience wrapper over home-manager.

cd ~/path/to/my-home-flake
nix flake init -t github:ciderale/home-flake
# edit 'yourUsername' to match the users
nix run .#yourUsername
git init
git add -a
git commit -m "initial home-manager config"

Design Decision

This flake is an experiment to keep parts of the home-manager configuration in a private repository while sharing other parts.

• configuration is split into 1+n repositories
  • one public repository with shareable modules
  • n private repository with data one may not want to share
    • contains the actual home-manager configurations
    • e.g. one repo for work and one repo for home
• the private repositories follows the pub
• Various aliases 'hm*=' to simplify working with this setting
  • hmCd: jump to the non-sharable repository
  • hmBuild: build the default configuration
  • hmSwitch: build and activate the default configuration
  • hmPull: update local flake to most recent sharable flake version
  • hmPullBuild/Switch: like hmPull, but also build/activate
• nixpkgs typically follows the public repos version
  • inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "home-flake/nixpkgs";
  • simplifies keeping all other repositories in-sync
• hmLocalBuild/hmLocalSwitch aliases
  • build/activate using the locally checked-out/modified public repo
  • TODO: use all lock entries from home-flake in hmLocalBuild
    • nix build . --override-input home-flake ./home-flake --override-input home-flake/nixpkgs github:nixos/nixpkgs/79bb815a1cdc789f6b036d2047e217ab3e989fff --override-input home-flake/home-manager github:nix-community/home-manager/433e8de330fd9c157b636f9ccea45e3eeaf69ad2
    • hmBaseNixpkgsVersion: display nixpkgs version of shared flake
    • hmLocalBuild uses the Nixpkgs version of the shared (local) flake

Directory Structure

• template: example usage of this flake
• modules: adding custom option to the configuration
  • these modules should not enable any configuration
  • they provide certain convenience configurations
  • they are sharable
• config: modules that effectively apply configurations
  • configs are like not sharable for other users
  • configs may contain user specific settings
• overlay: custom modifications of derivations
• apps: manually packaged (typically MacOS gui) apps