I somehow persuaded myself to try using Nix to to manage my dotfiles and command line environment again. Things have changed since I last tried it, and so far I am finding it magical. Two different Macs (with different architectures) set up identically just like that!

@mcg Nice isn’t it? I have set up a Linux NixOS machine in the past but this time I am just using home-manager. I really like the declarative approach and being able to try out programming languages with nix shell.

@bsag Hey there! I have a few questions and I literally just signed up to micro.blog to post this: 1) What do you mean by manage your dotfiles with nixOS? You mean you copy them from your Mac to another machine with NixOS? Or...something else? I'm really baffled by your post and I know you know what you're talking about (I've seen several of your posts in the past) so I am very curious. Also, I'm looking for a good way to manage my own dotfiles in an easy way. Thanks! 😃

@NatHarari Hi! I’m not using NixOS (the operating system) but I am using Nix (the language) with HomeManager to manage my dotfiles and development environment. The Nix files are in a private GitHub repo, so after installing Nix (again, the language, not the operating system) I can pull the repo on a new machine and reliably replicate the same environment. I’ll probably do a post about it in the next few weeks if you’re interested.

@bsag Wow. Didn’t realize that one could manage their dotfiles using Nix without using Nix(OS/PM). I’ll have to look into this.

@bsag Ahhh ok! That makes more sense. Yes, please! I'd love to see a post about it. That would be very helpful. Thank you for replying so quickly and for your great blog, btw. 👍😃

@patbak The focus tends to be on NixOS when you read things about Nix so it’s not so well known I think.

@NatHarari Will do! I’m in the depths of exam marking at the moment so it might take me a little while 😁

@bsag No worries, and good luck! I'm subbed on RSS so I'll see all your posts when you put them up. 👍