Nix Home Manager Setup Guide

This document walks you through setting up Nix and Home Manager to manage your system configuration. This is catered towards Azure ML compute instances with it's inherent volume configuration challenges. Still WIP

1. Install Nix Package Manager

First, check if Nix is already installed on your system:

nix --version

If Nix is not installed, run the official installer:

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

After installation, source the Nix profile to use it in your current session:

. ~/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

2. Add Home Manager Channel

Check if the Home Manager channel is already added:

nix-channel --list | grep home-manager

If it's not listed, add the Home Manager channel:

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

3. Install Home Manager

Check if Home Manager is installed:

home-manager --version

If it's not installed, set up the NIX_PATH environment variable and install Home Manager:

export NIX_PATH=$HOME/.nix-defexpr/channels:/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels${NIX_PATH:+:$NIX_PATH}
nix-shell '<home-manager>' -A install

4. Configure Home Manager

Create the configuration directory if it doesn't exist:

mkdir -p ~/.config/home-manager

Link your home.nix configuration file:

# If you're in the directory with your home.nix file:
ln -sf "$(pwd)/home.nix" ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix
ln -sf "$(pwd)/modules" ~/.config/home-manager/modules

5. Apply Your Configuration

Apply your configuration using Home Manager:

home-manager switch -b backup

The -b backup flag creates a backup of your previous configuration.

6. Rollback to previous generation

Select previous generation link and run respective activation script

home-manager generations 

Troubleshooting

• If you encounter permission issues during Nix installation, make sure you have sudo access
• If Home Manager fails to install, verify that your Nix channels are properly updated
• For configuration errors, check the syntax in your home.nix file

Additional Resources

• Nix Documentation
• Home Manager Documentation
• Home Manager Options
• Nix Packages

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.