/nix-config

Primary LanguageNix

Bootstrap

nix-bootstrap is a very experimental script that automatically installs nix and home-manager with flakes enabled, and bootstraps a flake template. It should work on most platforms including NixOS, other Linux distributions, WSL, containers and MacOS. It's main goal is to simplify the first time experience of setting up a usable nix environment by running a single command.

Usage

starter flake - a home-manager configuration with nix and some very basic utilities:

bash <(curl https://e-nikolov.github.io/nix-bootstrap) --template starter

Minimal flake - a home-manager configuration with zsh and a number of customizations:

bash <(curl https://e-nikolov.github.io/nix-bootstrap) --template minimal

Full flake - the complete setup for all of my personal machines that use both NixOS and home-manager:

bash <(curl https://e-nikolov.github.io/nix-bootstrap) --template full

Bootstrap your own flake:

bash <(curl https://e-nikolov.github.io/nix-bootstrap) --template <flake-template-url>

Nix Resources

Gotchas

  • you can only install user-level services via home-manager. For system-level services that require root (e.g. docker, tailscale), you either need to switch to NixOS/nix-darwin or install them via your OS's package manager

  • some packages require extra setup and are installed via something like programs.git.enable = true. Check https://rycee.gitlab.io/home-manager/options.html

  • The Nix language can be counterintuitive and deceptive - https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language is a good starting point. In short, it's a functional language inspired by Haskell that is essentially json/yaml with functions.

    • Attribute sets - similar to object/map/json structure
        {
        a = {
            b = {
                c = "d";
            };
        };
    }

    is equivalent to

        { a.b.c = "d"; }
    • Function definitions - the following is a function f with 3 arguments a, b, c that returns their sum:
    {f = a: b: c: a + b + c; }
    • Function calls - x will have the resulting value of calling the function f with arguments 1, 2, and 3
    {x = f 1 2 3; }
    • sometimes calling a function with arguments has lower priority than other operations around it, so the arguments would have to be surrounded with parentheses:
    {x = [(f 1 2 3) (f 3 4 5)]; }
    • calling a function with an attribute set as an argument:
    {
    x = doSomething {
        a = 1;
        b = 2;
        c = 3;
    };
}

To the untrained eye, this might look like a function definition, but it's actually a call of the function doSomething with an attribute set argument.