nix-config

"This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here."

This repository contains my personal NixOS & Home Manager configurations for multiple machines. This configuration is an eternal work-in-progress as I stumble my way through the ins and outs of Nix. I've done my best to document some of the speedbumps I've hit along with what I've learned via comments.

Project Layout

• flake.nix: All system configurations are managed as Nix Flake outputs
• lib/: Additional functions, evaluations, and imports
• mastpkgs/: My own personal Nix packages used in my configurations
• nixos/targets: NixOS hardware/platform target configs
• nixos/hosts: Host-specific NixOS configuration
• nixos/modules: Common NixOS configuration modules
• hm/: Home Manager modules

Building NixOS Systems

NixOS System configuration can be built from flakes by passing the nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {} function to a nixosConfigurations.<name> output:

{
  outputs = { self, nixpkgs }:
  {
    nixosConfigurations.example = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      modules = [
        configuration.nix
      ];
    }
  }
}

As my configuration grew and I added more systems, I got tired of the amount of attrset boilerplate I repeated for each system. I decided to abstract it in my own nixosSystem (lib/nixosSystem.nix) function that applies a common configuration pattern across all systems.

The nixosSystem function wraps nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem and passes in NixOS modules common to all systems such as Home Manager, the base configuration module, and nixpkgs overlays as well as appropriate modules from the nixos/targets/ and nixos/hosts/ directories.

I typically build system configurations on a single machine and deploy them to other hosts:

# nixos-rebuild switch --flake '.#<host>' --target-host <hostname> --use-remote-sudo

Building Home Configuration

Home Manager has support for building home configurations from homeConfigurations flake outputs. This is handy for deploying my home configuration on non-NixOS hosts like WSL & OSX.

# home-manager switch --flake '.#<profile>'