Home Manager

Programs, services, dotfiles, and configs backed up and managed with home-manager

Glossary

Manual Install
Automated Install

Manual Install

This build would not be possible without Nix.
If using an operating system other than NixOS, install Nix.

Multi-user Installation:

curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh -s -- --daemon

Single-user Installation:

curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh -s -- --no-daemon

Visit the community docs for more info.

Add the appropriate channel

Nix channels are what provide package stability. The master channel is the current stable branch.

Master or unstable channel:

nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz home-manager
nix-channel --update

For a specific channel:

nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-23.11.tar.gz home-manager
nix-channel --update

Change the release version to match your release

Install Home Manager to nix

Now that your channel is added, install Home Manager via Nix.

nix-shell '<home-manager>' -A install

Source Home Manager script

This step is only necessary if you don't plan to let Home Manager manage your dotfiles.

. "$HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/hm-session-vars.sh"

You can also add id to your .profile to source the script each time the terminal loads:

echo ". \"$HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/hm-session-vars.sh\"" >> $HOME/.profile

Clone the repository

Clone the repository (and all submodules) to the home-manager directory:

mkdir -p $HOME/.config/home-manager/
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/theLockesmith/home-manager.git $HOME/.config/home-manager

Use Home Manager to load your home

If everything goes as planned, you can deploy your home environment by running:

home-manager switch

Automated Installer

This install script will automate the entire process. It uses default locations and backs up your current .bashrc and .profile.

Installer options:

-d, --desktop           Run the installer for a desktop environment (default)
-s, --server            Run the installer for a server environment

--daemon                Passes --daemon to NixOS installer (default)
--no-daemon             Passes --no-daemon to NixOS installer

--no-backup             Installer backs up dotfiles in your home directory by default. Use this flag to disable backups of dotfiles. *It is not advised to use this flag the first time you run this.

Run the installer

For a desktop environment

. <(curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/theLockesmith/home-manager/main/.scripts/home-manager-switch) --desktop

For a server environment

. <(curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/theLockesmith/home-manager/main/.scripts/home-manager-switch) --server

Known Issues

If you get an error that looks like error: could not set permissions on '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user' to 755: Operation not permitted or something similar, this is a known Nix issue. The only resolution I've found is to reboot.