Nix

Package manager and OS focused on reproducible builds.

Zero to Nix is a guide for getting running and using nix. It uses an installer script by the publishing organization. I chose to use the official installer and activate flakes manually.

https://github.com/jetpack-io/devbox - A wrapper over nix for development environments

Enabling flakes

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix
echo "experimental-features = nix-command flakes" >> ~/.config/nix/nix.conf

Home Manager

Home manager allows you to configure your home environment (add tools and programs, and also configuring). This blog post lays out¹ the basic ideas, but it was out of date in methodology by the time I tried. As of <2023-01-25 Wed> using the official guide got me on the right track. I experimented with the tool and got it working, ultimately, I don’t see a reason to replace my existing dotfiles / dotfile management with this. If I were starting out from scratch or very little configs, it may be worth it.

macOS and Nix

https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin

1. Pedersen, O. K. Declarative management of dotfiles with Nix and Home Manager. (2021).