Home Manager Nix configuration

It uses nix-darwin and home-manager to set up and manage the user's home environment.

This Readme is currently MacOS-centric. However, the configuration itself has been tried on Ubuntu and NixOS and it turns out to be working (not using darwin-configuration.nix, obviously, but using the whole Home Manager config.).

Installation

Automated installation

Currently MacOS-specific

$ bash -i <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlexeyRaga/home.nix/main/install.sh)

At the end of the successful installation the installer will ask to tune the configuration in your ~/.nixpkgs, re-enter the shell and switch into the new configuration.

Before switching, consider to populate your secrets:

~/.nixpkgs/home/secrets/default.nix
~/.nixpkgs/home/work/secrets/default.nix

Edit both files. The first one represents "global" secrets, and the second one is for work-related secrets.

Now issuing the switch command should have your system set up:

$ darwin-rebuild switch

Manual installation

0. Install Nix

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

1. Install nix-darwin

    $ nix-build https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/archive/master.tar.gz -A installer
    $ ./result/bin/darwin-installer
   

   Keep darwin-configuration.nix default (we are going to replace it later), but darwin-rebuild switch command should be now working (reload your shell).

2. Add home-manager channel:

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

3. (Optionaly, MacOS only) Install Homebrew

   $ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
   

4. Clone this repository as your local ~/.nixpkgs
   You should have ~/.nixpkgs/darwin-configuration.nix from this repository, replacing the default one.

5. Set up your secrets:

    $ cp ~/.nixpkgs/home/secrets/default.nix.example ~/.nixpkgs/home/secrets/default.nix
    $ cp ~/.nixpkgs/home/work/secrets/default.nix.example ~/.nixpkgs/home/work/secrets/default.nix

   Edit both files. The first one represents "global" secrets, and the second one is for work-related secrets.

6. Switch the profile:

    $ darwin-rebuild switch

At this point everything should be installed and the environment should be ready to rock. Restart the shell if you haven't paid attention to the prompt :)

Updating the configuration

Make changes to the configuration files and run darwin-rebuild switch to update the configuration.

Note on integration with Homebrew

If Homebrew is installed, this configuration will manage Homebrew packages via darwin/apps.nix file. Use darwin/apps.nix to specify which packages should be installed via brew and Nix will handle the rest.

Your system configuration

A couple of entry points to tune your config:

• home/packages.nix - Packages to install
• home/default.nix - Your main home "configuration": what programs and services are enabled, how shell is set up, etc.

MacOS specific:

• darwin/preferences.nix - Global MacOS preferences and settings
• darwin/apps.nix - Applications to install via Homebrew
• darwin/dock.nix - Configure your dock

Modules overview

A short overview of modules and what they can download

Git

git.nix module installs and enables `Git and creates a global configuration (username/email/github user name).

It also allows configuring "workspaces": folders that should have their own alterations of git configuration. For example, email addresses that are used for git commits can be different for private and work-related projects.

Example:

  tools.git = {
    enable = true;
    userName = "Donald Duck";
    userEmail = "donald.duck@gmail.com";
    githubUser = secrets.github.userName;

    workspaces = {
      "src/work" = {
        user = { email = "donald.duck@bigbank.com"; };
        core = { autocrlf = true; };
      };
      "src/charity" {
        user = { email = "donald.duck@charity-works.net"; };
      };
    };
  };

SecureEnv

SecureEnv allows to store secrets securely populating them from password managers (currently only 1Password) with an ability to export these secrets as environment variables and ssh keys in ssh-agent.

The reason for not exporting them from password managers directly is that they only keeps a session open for a short period of time, which means that users will be asked to re-authenticate often.

Instead, secrets are copied to Keychain (on MacOS) or Keyring (on Linux) and then used to source env variables. This way secrets are never stored on disk unencrypted but can still be made conveniently available to the user as environment variables.

Example:

  secureEnv.onePassword = {
    enable = true;
    sessionVariables = {
      # This env variable will be set up for user's session
      GITHUB_TOKEN = {
        account = "my.1password.com";
        vault = "Private";
        item = "Github";
        field = "token";
      };
    };
    sshKeys = {
      # These keys will be set up for SSH
      staging_pem = {
        account = "mycompany.1password.com";
        vault = "Dev - Shared DevOps";
        item = "staging-ssh-key";
        field = "notes";
      };
      test_pem = {
        account = "mycompany.1password.com";
        vault = "Dev - Shared DevOps";
        item = "test-ssh-key";
        field = "notes";
      };
    };
  };

NOTE: Secret Store module will not remove any passwords from Keychain/Keyring. It will only сopy passwords and update existing ones.

.NET

dotnet.nix module makes .NET SDK available for the machine. It

It also allows configuring extra Nuget sources, which is useful in setups with private nuget repositories.

Example:

  tools.dotnet = {
    enable = true;
    nugetSources = {
      bigBankGithub = {
        url = "https://nuget.pkg.github.com/BigBank/index.json";
        userName = secrets.github.userName;
        password = secrets.github.token;
      };
    };
  };

AWS

AWS can be configured via tools.aws module.

AWS can have statically defined profiles, and SAML profiles (using Google as ID Provider) such as:

  tools.aws = {
    enable = true;

    profiles = {
      default = {
        accessKeyId = "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE";
        secretAccessKey = "wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY";
      };
    };

    ssoProfiles = {
      test = {
        sso_start_url = "https://my-company.awsapps.com/start";
        sso_account_id = "123456789012";
        sso_role_name = "admin";
        sso_region = "ap-southeast-2";
        region = "ap-southeast-2";
      };

      prod = {
        sso_start_url = "https://my-company.awsapps.com/start";
        sso_account_id = "210987654321";
        sso_role_name = "admin";
        sso_region = "ap-southeast-2";
        region = "ap-southeast-2";
      };
    };
  };

When ssoProfiles are defined, an AWS SDK aws sso login --profile <name> command can be used to log in to AWS.