Nix starter kit

Provisioning a fresh system

• Install the Nix package manager and enable Flakes
• On the target system, use the provided template to create an initial home-manager configuration with batteries included:

mkdir -p ~/.config
nix flake new --template github:active-group/nix-starter-kit ~/.config/home-manager

• Adapt ~/.config/home-manager/flake.nix according to your username and other details
• To configure modules like Emacs, zsh, or others, check the README files in their respective subdirectories in this repository
• If you wish to use LaTeX with batteries included, then you need to clone the howto repository to ~/howto (or configure the path in your home.nix according to your checkout path). If you already have a working LaTeX setup, you don't need to change anything.
• Now execute the following commands from a shell:

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix
echo 'experimental-features = nix-command flakes' > ~/.config/nix/nix.conf
nix run home-manager/release-25.05 switch

Usage

Adding software

On https://search.nixos.org/packages you can search for packages you'd like to have available on your system. Add those packages to your home.nix in home.packages. Check out the home-manager manual or ask someone if in trouble :)

To "activate" a new configuration, always execute

home-manager switch

Keeping things up to date

When asked to update your configuration (usually when something has changed in the starter kit), do the following:

cd ~/.config/home-manager
nix flake update
home-manager switch
nix run github:active-group/nix-starter-kit#update-daemon

See the note on updating the Mac trampolines in the README for mac-app-util.

If you see errors related to "sandbox initialization", you might need to turn off sandboxing temporarily in /etc/nix/nix.conf.

Updating Nixpkgs (for admins)

nix flake update

If there's a new Nix version, consider updating the version number in flake.nix. Then git push.

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