My Personal Nix System Configuration

This is a project to help me to manage my Nix system configuration, mainly with Darwin and Home Manager.

Best effort to try to use as many built-in features as possible instead of relying third party software, e.g. Raycast, Aerospace, Yabai

What do I use?

General

• Shell: fish
• Terminal: ghostty
• Editor: neovim
• Multiplexer: tmux
• Prompt: starship
• Browser: Safari
• Docker: orbstack
• Network: tailscale
• Launcher: Built-in Spotlight Search
• Window Tiling Manager: aerospace MacOS Bulit-ins
  • Changing spaces with built-in macos commands with reduced motion
  • Managing windows with built-in macos commands
    • Left | Right | Top | Bottom | Fill
• Automation: hammerspoon
  • Best effort of vimium implementation code here
  • Menubar to show current space code here
  • Moving window to spaces code here

Notes for future me

Commands to make it work (For future me)

Installing Nix on Macos

https://nixos.org/download#nix-install-macos

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

Configure github helper

Getting localhostname

scutil --get LocalHostName

Getting username

whoami

Switch to fish shell

chsh -s (which fish)

Build nix to results

Prebuilt script

The following script will initialise the function above and install additional node packages too.

bash ~/nix-system-config-v2/scripts/init.sh

Manually

// run this at the root of this directory
nix run nix-darwin -- switch --flake ~/nix-system-config-v2/.#Kyles-MacBook-Air

Initialise darwin rebuild

darwin-rebuild switch --flake ~/nix-system-config-v2

Cert SSL Issue

// https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2899#issuecomment-1669501326
sudo rm /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
sudo ln -s /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

### Cleanup

```bash
// Cleanup nix
bash ~/nix-system-config-v2/scripts/nix-cleanup.sh

// Cleanup neovim
bash ~/nix-system-config-v2/scripts/nvim-reset.sh

Check config issue

nix config check

If there's multiple nix in the path, it is from the nix root, run the following the remove it.

sudo -i nix-env -e nix

error: file 'nixpkgs' was not found in the Nix search path (add it using $NIX_PATH or -I)

// https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2982#issuecomment-539794642
sudo -i nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs
sudo -i nix-channel --update nixpkgs

Installing NPM packages that are not available in Nix

Prebuilt sript

bash ~/nix-system-config-v2/scripts/install-node-packages.sh

Manually

Navigate to ...../modules/home-manager/node-packages and run the following command to generate a nix expression. The expression can then be added into home manager

• -18 is to build with nodejs v18

nix-shell -p nodePackages.node2nix --command "node2nix -18 -i ./node-packages.json -o node"

Karabiner Driverkit

https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice/releases/download/v3.1.0/Karabiner-DriverKit-VirtualHIDDevice-3.1.0.pkg

// Activate
/Applications/.Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Manager.app/Contents/MacOS/Karabiner-VirtualHIDDevice-Manager activate

// Restart kanata
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.kanata.plist
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.kanata.plist