I've been trying nixos recently and after watching a bunch of tutorials from various people, I have managed to enable home-manager and flakes.
My question is: where should I write the packages I want to install? In home.nix? In flakes.nix? In configuration.nix (probably not)? I'm probably only gonna have a single user on this machine.
So far, I think the only difference between writing the packages in home.nix compared to flakes.nix is that in the 1st senario, the apps will only be available for the user, while in the 2nd, it will be available for the whole system. Also, I could use the home.nix for non-nixos systems too. Other than that, I can probably write them the same way either on home.nix or flakes.nix and have the same result on my machine.
PS. On search.nixos.org there is an option to search for flakes. What is this? I am planing to get my packages from the packages tab, but I'm wondering that maybe I should search in the flakes tab instead (though it doesn't seem to have many packages).
PPS. Those are some resources I've found (I've mainly watched the videos and have started reading some of the guides):
- https://github.com/Evertras/simple-homemanager/blob/main/04-explain-outputs-function.md
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a67Sv4Mbxmc
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a67Sv4Mbxmc&list=PLko9chwSoP-15ZtZxu64k_CuTzXrFpxPE
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63sSGuclBn0&list=PLuRxZ95-8LY1mlotZMYGYib5sXJRw1RxW
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLwbNhSxLd4
- https://discourse.nixos.org/t/pass-specialargs-to-the-home-manager-module/33068/4
- https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.xhtml#ch-usage
- https://www.chrisportela.com/posts/home-manager-flake/
- https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/
- https://discourse.nixos.org/t/practical-nix-flakes-anatomy-a-guided-tour-of-flake-nix/42550/8
- https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/v2xpjm/big_list_of_flakes_tutorials/
System packages in configuration.nix, user packages in home.nix. I'd say anything that is non-interactive and/or requires root access is a good rule of thumb for system packages. Beyond that I try to use modules for configuring packges and there is usually only one of nixos and home manager options (sometimes there are duplicates).
As for flakes I mostly use it to handle a bunch of different systems from one config and any flake specific configs. I also use standalone flakes for dev environments but that's not related to the system config.
Ay, thanks for answering! I need some help understanding this😅
This means usually I only have to add options only in home.nix or configuration.nix, not both. (What about options in flakes.nix? Should I search those on the flakes/options tab?)
Would it be the same if I put the system packages in flakes.nix instead of configuration.nix? Will it have a different result? Will I have to write them differently?
Extra questions:
Does putting a package in home.nix have the same version control flakes provides?
Once I enabled home-manager, I saw that in ~/.config/nixos a flakes.nix and a home.nix files appeared. I already have a flake.nix and a home.nix files in my etc/nixos directory. What's going on?
Does putting packages in configuration.nix use the version control flakes provide?
Not quite sure what you mean here. I normally only configure out-of-tree packages as flake modules (or whatever the term is), and I don't think there is an official collection/search page for these. It's mainly that certain packages require it like
lanzaboote, andhome-managerfor that matter.It sounds like you configured
home-managersystem wide, probably through /etc/nixos/flake.nix, but then called thehome-managerexecutable. If you did configure it like this then you do not need to callhome-managerever sincenixos-rebuildetc commands will handle this for you.Typically, it will be configured to follow
inputs.nixpkgsso packages will use versions of whatever revision is currently pulled. In my system that is:and then you essentially pass that to
configuration.nix, andhome.nix.And although you seem to already be using flakes, when you call:
a new revision of input.nixpkgs will be pulled, and so packages configured in configuration.nix will be updated when you next call
or whatever you used to update your system.
Refer to: https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/
if you haven't already as there is where I got started from for the most part. There's a lot more detail I missed since nix and flakes are pretty complex (and I don't fully understand much of it either).
Oh thank you, that's a lot of important info you gave me :)
You probably solved some/many of my problems, I'll keep digging. Thanks again!