[Nix-dev] Nix as a dotfiles manager

[Arseniy Seroka]

>
> On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 9:29 PM, Arseniy Seroka <ars.seroka at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hello!
> > I want to do smth like
> > `if networking.name = "foo"
> >     then writeFile "/home/user/.dorfile"
> >     else if networking.name = "bar" then ...`.
> What do you mean by networking.name, are you referring to the NixOS
> option?

Yes. (but it doesn't matter indeed).

> And what is a best way to do it?

If you are under NixOS, then you should use the activation script to
> copy it to the home directory of the user.  Nix is deliberately not
> capable of writing out-side the Nix store, but we can create & execute
> scripts which are sym-linking the files of the Nix store.

Indeed I mean NixOS instead of just Nix.

> I thought smth like: now we are making pkgs and making symlinks to their
> > executable to ls `~/.nix-profile/bin/`.
> > Maybe there is a way for some derivation set the "output path" as a `~/`
> and
> > do smth like (write it in a ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix):
> No, the ~/ is replaced while building the derivations, such as we do
> not pollute user environment, and such that builds can be reproduced
> when multiple users are requesting the same derivation.

So can you tell me how does Nix and Nixos know that they have to link
binaries to a `~/.nix-profile/bin/` if we are using `nix-env -i`?
May be we have to dig here to replace output path for configs to a user's
directory and produce derivations with text files?
SO

> > `configs = buildConfigEnv "~/" [
> >     { name = ".zshrc"; contents = ''#zshrc config''
> >   }
> > ]`
>
is showing smth like this...

2014-12-01 13:28 GMT+03:00 Sergey Mironov <grrwlf at gmail.com>:

> Hi. I've adopted the following compromise solution:
> 1) Add the file include/templatecfg.nix with the following contents
> { config, pkgs, ... } :
>
> {
>   environment.etc."template_XResources".source = ../cfg/Xresources;
>   environment.etc."template_vimrc".source = ../cfg/vimrc;
>   environment.etc."template_ssh_config".source = ../cfg/ssh_config;
>
>   /* note, it should be possible to define inplace config here like
> following:
>     environment.etc."template_ssh_config".source = textFile "dotbla" ''
>       [dotbla config contents]
>     '';
>   */
> }
>
> 2) put template configs mentioned there in the ../cfg folder
>
> 3) For every machine, add
>
>   require = [
>     ...
>     ./include/templatecfg.nix
>     ...];
>
> Now, every time I want to update my $HOME/.dotfiles I copy them from
> /etc/template_* files. From the other side, sometimes I want to commit
> my changed .dotfiles back into Nix repository. In this case I copy
> them from $HOME to the $HOME/proj/mynixcfg/..../cfg/

Your solution is really nice, but I want to automate it (esp the process of
deploying my env on new machine), I can copy files now and manage them by
git..

-- 
Sincerely,
Arseniy Seroka
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