juspay / nix-dev-home

A `home-manager` template providing useful tools & settings for Nix-based development (macOS & Linux supported)

nix-dev-home

A home-manager template providing useful tools & settings for Nix-based development. See home/default.nix to see what's available.

Getting Started

NOTE: These instructions do not apply if you use NixOS.¹

1. Install Nix.
2. Initialize your home-manager config using this repo as template:

   mkdir ~/nixconfig 
   cd ~/nixconfig
   nix flake init -t github:juspay/nix-dev-home
   nix run .#sd "runner" "$USER" flake.nix

   • Optionally, you may edit ./home/default.nix to your liking.
     • In particular, for Git to be able to commit, you must set your name and email here:

       nix-dev-home/home/default.nix

       Lines 115 to 116 in 191cbd4

       	# userName = "John Doe";
       	# userEmail = "[email protected]";

3. Run nix run² to activate your configuration.
   • Does this fail to run? See the Troubleshooting section below.
4. Restart your terminal.

After steps 1-4, you should expect to see the starship prompt.

Anytime you modify your home configuration in ./home/*.nix, re-run nix run to activate the new configuration.

Demo

A sample demo of the setup process is shown below:

Details

The configuration repo has flake.nix file in the current directory and a ./home/default.nix file containing the home-manager configuration that you can review. It also has a justfile, which provides a set of recipes analogous to Make targets to interact with the nix flake.

You can then execute nix develop, to ensure you are in the development shell with just installed, followed by just run to activate this configuration in your $HOME. On most systems you are likely to experience at least one of the issues mentioned below in Troubleshooting. A more complete sequence might be

nix-dev-env setup

> nix develop
(nix:nix-dev-home-env) > rm ~/.bashrc ~/.profile && just run && direnv allow
(nix:nix-dev-home-env) > exit
> bash
runner on 12ca6a64c923 work on  feature/branch via ❄️  impure (nix-dev-home-env) 
⬢ [Docker] ❯ 

If you prefer, you can simply execute nix run, but using just will perform some additional validation and ensure you are able to use the other commands in the justfile.

To browse the capabilities of home-manager (and to see what else can go in your ./home/default.nix -- such as shell aliases), consult home-manager options reference. You can also run man home-configuration.nix in the terminal.

Troubleshooting

error: opening lock file ...

Problem: nix run shows an error like: error: opening lock file '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/utkarsh.pandey1/profile.lock': No such file or directory

Solution: This is an instance of nix-community/home-manager#4611. Run sudo mkdir /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/$USER/ && sudo chown $USER /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/$USER and try again.

Existing file ... is in the way of ...

Problem: Running nix run (home-manager) complains "Existing file ... is in the way of ..."

Solution: Delete those existing dotfiles (take a backup first), and try again. In home-manager, you can configure your shell directly in Nix (for macOS zsh, this is programs.zsh.envExtra) and may also include your existing dotfile verbatim.

Cannot use cache / cachix

Problem: Cannot use cachix: Running nix run nixpkgs#cachix use nammayatri (for example) does not succeed.

Solution: Add yourself to the trusted-users nix config and restart the nix daemon.

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix
echo "trusted-users = root $USER" >> $HOME/.config/nix/nix.conf
sudo pkill nix-daemon

FAQ

But I use NixOS

You can embed this configuration inside your NixOS configuration, and thus share it with non-NixOS systems (like macOS and Ubuntu). See the "both" template of https://github.com/srid/nixos-flake for an example. If you don't want to share the configuration with macOS (ie., you use only Linux for development), see the "linux" template instead.

/nix/store garbage collection

By default garbage collection is run automatically every week. If your projects use nix-direnv, you don't have to worry about having to download the dependencies again while in a remote area with limited internet access (see prominent features of nix-direnv).

Footnotes

1. If you use NixOS, you can adapt the NixOS template of nixos-flake by using configuration from this repo. ↩

2. Executing this step will modify the contents of your $HOME directory. You will be warned before overwriting, but not before creating links to newly created configuration files in the nix store. Since home-manager does not currently provide an integrated and automated feature to eliminate the links it creates, be aware that if you would like to reverse this operation, you will need to curate your home directory manually. ↩

nix-dev-home's Issues

Add `nixd` for vscode LSP

cf. nixos-asia/website#34

should factoring, imports, and directory tree mirror `srid/nixos-config`?

I realize if this is home-manager only and forever it wouldn't matter much, but it might be helpful if the factoring were a bit more in line with srid/nixos-config to support comprehension of the abstraction that arises with multiple systems, beyond home-manager, etc.

An example of this leads to a directory tree like

.
├── .envrc
├── .github
│   └── workflows
├── .gitignore
├── flake.lock
├── flake.nix
├── home
│   ├── default.nix
│   ├── neovim
│   ├── starship.nix
│   └── terminal.nix
└──justfile

but, more importantly, I find the contents of flake.nix, default.nix + terminal.nix (vs home.nix), etc to be more legible.

I'd be happy to submit those changes in reasonable chunks or feel free to consider doing so in future updates since it is essentially just turning the dial slightly further in the direction of srid/nixos-config. No worries if this is undesirable for some reason I haven't accounted for.

Many thanks for nix-dev-home among other things!

>20mins to activate on fresh install

From @shivaraj-bh

Add `emacs.nix` pre-configured for Haskell and `direnv`

Ref: https://github.com/srid/nixos-config/blob/master/home/emacs.nix

Replace `home/neovim` with nixvim

https://github.com/nix-community/nixvim looks cleaner approach

Ubuntu: user systemd session degraded (`tracker-extract-3.service`)

Seeing this upon doing nix run on Ubuntu:

nix-command error

On a brand new install, I get the following error:

error: experimental Nix feature 'nix-command' is disabled; use '--extra-experimental-features nix-command' to override

Add `neovim.nix` pre-configured for Haskell

Add it to imports of home.nix, so the user can disable it just by removing that one line.

cf. https://github.com/srid/nixos-config/blob/master/home/neovim/haskell.nix

Git wouldn't work right off the bat

Just set this up on a WSL host, and noticed:

The user will need to fill in this first:

nix-dev-home/home/default.nix

Lines 115 to 116 in 191cbd4

	# userName = "John Doe";
	# userEmail = "[email protected]";

Which is something we could automate as part of #11

Make sure that shell completions work

On macOS in particular zsh completions should work. Do they?

For nix-darwin, it requires extra configuration: srid/nixos-config#50

cf. nix-community/home-manager#2562

Simplify README

The README needs to be simplified to make the steps perfectly clear and easy to understand.

Images for ref

Automated install

Instead of pairing with folks to do manual setup of nix-dev-home on a computer with Nix installed, it'd be great to have an automated script that works like DetSys nix-installer.

It should do:

• Move user's .zshrc etc out of the way. Offer a prompt to do this.
• Fill in the template (cf. flake-parts/templates#2)
  • Set username in flake.nix

    nix-dev-home/flake.nix

    Line 29 in 5c8f1aa

    flake.nix-dev-home.username = "runner";

  • Prompt user to set git meta (otherwise #37)
• Run nix run
• Run nix-index to create the index for first time. (already automated)

Stretch:

• "Use template" via Github API to create the remote repo
• nix-health
  • Offer to resolve max-jobs/trusted-users automatically (requires Temp Admin Access)

Pin nixpkgs

... so that nix run nipxkgs#.. will always use the same flake input.

Replace `nixci` and `nix-health` with `omnix`

Add a flake app for running our neovim config

nix run github:juspay/nix-dev-home#neovim should run neovim with the config in this repo, without depending on any of user's dotfiles or local $HOME cache.

cf. https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1aulb75/easy_neovim_with_configuration_and_runnable_with/