Flake it till you make it!

The dots used to be managed by a custom script that I wrote, which was very much prone to breakages, so I took a flaky approach.

This is an experimental branch where I’m testing nix.

I wish to work with a single file mindset and see how far I can take it, that’s why I opted to not use home-manager and use GNU Stow instead for dotfiles symlink.

References

• Flakes first steps
• Shell scripts with nix
• Installing a specific version with nix (explains how to work with overlays)
• Declarative management of dotfiles with Nix and Home Manager
• Managing dotfiles with nix

Installation

• Get the list of packages to replace using brew leaves.
• Install nix: curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh.

Set-up the packages

• Create ./flake.nix
• Run nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" profile install . --impure in the dotfiles directory.
• Run stow <dir> to symlink the dotfiles. e.g.: stow nix (To not link and see what the stow command will do, run stow -nv linux)
• To upgrade the packages, run nix flake update and then nix profile upgrade dotfiles --impure
• To upgrade specific flake inputs nix flake update emacs-overlay
• Remember to run nix-collect-garbage -d to clean up old generations and to save space.

Miscellaneous Tips

• If you’re using macos, check ./bin/bin/nix-mac-app to add nix apps so that they can be indexed by spotlight and copy nix fonts to a location where they’re discoverable.