#nixdarwin — Public Fediverse posts

You know, I love the idea but I think #NixDarwin is way more trouble than it’s worth. Despite stable, reproducible builds being its raison d'être, I feel like I’m constantly fixing things.

Broken nix dependencies and non-standard Homebrew setup causing issues seem to be the most frequent offenders.

Not to mention how few things are on nix packages and how many are way out of date, I end up using Homebrew for most things anyway, though, admittedly, declaratively.

It’s likely a skill issue, but as much as I like a declarative configuration, I’m not sure I want to invest so much time into knowing all of the underlying systems at the depth needed to get everything set up *exactly* the right way. Add to that the amount of things that can’t be setup in macOS via command line and must be setup interactively, it’s hardly a perfectly reproducible configuration in the first place.

Of course, I’m enough of a masochist that I’ll probably keep trying out of sheer stubbornness anyway. 🫠

Any better alternatives?

Got a new MacBook from my employer this week (48GB? In this economy!?) and nix-darwin made it quite easy to set it up like the previous machine, including a declarative list of homebrew casks and App Store apps to install. Between that and my Emacs and hammerspoon configs, I quickly felt at home again. #nix #nixdarwin

Before I restart my Xcode project from scratch…

Does anyone have experience trying to get an old Xcode project that was running on a ~2016 intel mac with old Xcode, using a C based package dependency, running on a new modern mac that uses nix-darwin? I can’t get it to build.

I am getting weird build errors seemingly related to non existent header file errors. I *suspect* the issue is related to paths somewhere between nix, command line build tools vs xcode, clang stuff from the package, expected paths vs nix paths, etc. However, it may also just be differences in APIs from the old system to the new.

I’ve tried a bunch of things like change the version of clang, interop settings, made sure xcode-select was pointing to xcode not cli tools and whatnot. But I’m stuck. Before I restart this project fresh, if anyone has any potential things to check or tips etc I’m all ears. I’ve tried search and Gemini but to no avail. Any humans out there with suggestions?

#swiftlang #nix #xcode #development #macos #nixdarwin

In case you heard about #nixos, #nixdarwin, and the Dendritic pattern my new blog post might interest you: https://istvnurbn.me/2026/04/from-dotfiles-to-dendrites/

Wrote up how I manage dotfiles across macOS and Linux with Nix. One repo, one flake.lock — same shell, editor, and tools on every machine. Home Manager and nix-darwin do the heavy lifting.

https://getnix.io/guides/cross-platform-dotfiles/

#Nix #NixOS #HomeManager #nixdarwin #Dotfiles #Linux #macOS

Воспроизводимое изолированное окружение с Nix и DevContainers

Как фулстек разработчику, мне доводилось работать с проектами на совершенно разных технологиях. Как правило, нужно было поправить небольшой баг или сделать небольшую фичу. Для задач такого разряда стек технологий обычно не имеет значения: отладка примерно одинаковая что на JavaScript, что на Haskell, Go или Python. Написать немного кода мне, в общем-то, никогда не было сложно на любом языке, с которым я работал. Но вот что всегда было настоящей проблемой — это запустить и протестировать проект. На это запросто уходили дни: найти нужные версии компиляторов/интерпретаторов, дебаггера, пакетного менеджера и всякого сопутствующего тулинга. Я устал от этого, и придумал, как больше никогда в жизни не устанавливать тулинг вручную.

https://habr.com/ru/articles/1010282/

#nix #devcontainers #docker #reproducibility #nixos #nixdarwin

Might be of interest to #Nix users out there:

https://gist.github.com/totoroot/b9684294d599504218e0c655ca56767d

I created a script that helps me audit packages installed via nix profile as I often do that before adding them to my system configuration ❄️

I then tend to forget to remove them after I installed them via my system configuration (as systemPackages or via #HomeManager).

With this script I can later on audit all packages installed, check which binaries they provide and automatically remove them if they were found in my PATH somewhere else.

#NixOS #NixDarwin

Pure #github comment gold https://github.com/nix-darwin/nix-darwin/issues/740#issuecomment-3915074596

#nixos #nixdarwin

🔍 A riveting saga of transforming your Mac into a pristine museum exhibit with Nix-Darwin, because nothing screams #productivity like a system that stubbornly refuses to change. 🐢🎩 Watch a brave soul dive into the abyss of "imperative rot," only to emerge clutching a manual on how to make your shiny computer behave like an immovable monolith. 💀💻
https://carette.xyz/posts/going_immutable_macos/ #NixDarwin #MacTransformation #TechHumor #TechSaga #HackerNews #ngated

Anyone here using #nix on #macOS (#nixdarwin), #nh *and* has #homebrew configured through it? I'd love for you to try this out and tell me if it works correctly, I only have my setup to test it with 🙃 https://github.com/nix-community/nh/pull/395

wohoo 🙌 haven’t had a broken package for like 1w, I was wondering when that was about to happen.

No surprise since I’m on “nixpkgs-unstable” — bleeding edge baby! 🚀

#nixos #nix #nixdarwin

ffs, here we go again ... goddamn it @nixos_org why can't we just have a smooth transition :blobcatfacepalm:

#nix #nixos #nixDarwin

Any #nix / #nixpkgs users with #nixDarwin and #homeManager on macOS out there that have an idea how to cleanly uninstall nix-darwin AND home-manager for a flake based setup?

I’d like to switch from Determinate Systems nix installer to the for by #Lix Systems but it seems the only "documented" way to do so is to:

1) uninstall nix-darwin including the home-manager module made changes (so I don't toast my system)
2) uninstall nix via the Determinat uninstall
3) install nix via the Lix Systems installer
4) bootstrap nix-darwin
5) feed it my flake to get my configuration back

My problem is that step 1) is not clearly documented anywhere. There is this part for removing nix-darwin but it doesn't mention how it'll behave if the home-manager module is in use :|

I could use some #help here ’

#boostswelcome

#nix #nixDarwin #nixpkgsUnstable

https://matrix.to/#/!RRerllqmbATpmbJgCn:nixos.org/$0W3yHp73scGVnLLLk3JNQckyTX1IdG5EIrB2fgECMnw?via=nixos.org&via=matrix.org&via=tchncs.de

With @nixos_org , you no longer have to put these in your README.

“devShell” in, “How to build” instructions — out

#nix #nixos #nixdarwin

so proud of myself for managing to combine #nixos configuration for 2 hosts into one monorepo and #nix made it possible in a smooth way!

As a background, initially these hosts had their configuration split in 2 separate git repos. Although I’ve planned to do that for nearly 3 weeks already, just had to read a lot in order to get the ropes of it. 💯 to the folks @ Discord Nix which guided me ❤️

https://github.com/dminca/nix-config

#nixdarwin #homeManager #darwinConfiguration #x86_64darwin #aarch64darwin

Hypothetically.. if I was using nix-darwin could I ship and install a custom macOS keyboard bundle?

I've been using a german Dvorak bundle which I've customised for a good few years to cater to my programming needs and it's one of the things I have to re-install on every new system.

Or would that actually end up being it’s own package in a custom channel and then be pulled / installed? (might be difficult because I'm placing it in `/Library/Keyboard Layouts` not `~/Library/Keyboard Layouts` so it's available on the lockscreen.

#nix #nixdarwin #macOS

@nixos_org 🎉 took me 12 days to finally understand how this works & setup but I finally got a working secret management config! Check this out https://codeberg.org/dminca/nix-config/src/branch/main/secrets/example.yaml

#security #secretManagement #nix #nixDarwin #x86_64darwin #aarm64darwin

@jakehamilton here's my #NixDarwin + #HomeManager config https://github.com/abhin4v/nix-managed-macbook. #Nix

Perhaps someone who is familiar with NixOS/nix-darwin can give me a point in the right direction.

I'm trying to use nix-darwin on an M1 laptop running Sonoma, but packages seem to be behind. As an example, if I lookup Atuin in nix-packages.org, I can see that 23.11 has v 17, and unstable has v18.

I have tried running nix-channel --update darwin, but this does not seem to change anything; I still get v15 of atuin on my system. What am I missing?

#NixOS #NixDarwin