Bootstrap on Mac OS

[ashkan-leo]

Hello!

This repository is very inspiring. Thanks for sharing it with us!
Would you mind adding some notes on how to bootstrap a macOS system?
I am trying to enable flake on my macOS without any luck so far.

[malob]

It's on my list at some point to add some notes to the readme about bootstrapping. I haven't added that yet because I personally have never bootstrapped my current config from scratch on a macOS system (I switch to the current flake setup on an existing system), and I don't want to add "official" instructions to the readme until I've actually tested them to ensure they work. The GitHub workflow on this repo is a pretty good place to look to get the basic picture of what the steps required look like though.

Here are some additional notes that should be helpful:

• You'll of course want Nix (multi-user) installed on your system. The instructions for doing that are well covered by the Nix manual.
• With Nix installed, you can upgrade to a version of Nix that supports flakes by running nix-env -iA nixpkgs.nixFlakes.
• To actually used Flake related commands, you need to add experimental-features = nix-command flakes to your nix.conf file, or run Nix commands with a flag to enable the Flake features, nix --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' [...].
• nix-darwin requires that you have a /run directory. If that's not already setup on your system you can run the following commands to create it:

  echo -e "run\tprivate/var/run" | sudo tee -a /etc/synthetic.conf >/dev/null
  /System/Library/Filesystems/apfs.fs/Contents/Resources/apfs.util -B 2>/dev/null

• With all that done you can then build a nix-darwin configuration with nix build .#darwinConfigurations.[name].system, then activate that configuration by running ./result/sw/bin/darwin-rebuild switch --flake .#[name] (both of which should be run from the root of the repository with your configuration).
  • When running darwin-rebuild switch for the first time, you might get some non-fatal errors saying that files under /etc can't be linked, e.g., /etc/shells, since they already exist. You'll want to delete those and run darwin-rebuild switch again.
  • You'll notice that in the GitHub workflow I first build and switch to the bootstrap configuration I made. I do that first because it adds some basic Nix configuration to my environment first, like additional binary caches, which make building my full config for the first time faster. It's not essential or anything though.
• After doing all that, and restarting your shell, your nix-darwin environment/configuration should all be setup and working, and you can update/change your config and run darwin-rebuild switch --flake .#[name], to apply those changes.

[r17x]

@malob Thank you.

This is my environment state

• nix available in my shell when first run my machine
• darwin-rebuild not found
  So, I follow your comment:
• just run exec /run/current-system/sw/bin/fish and chsh -s /run/current-system/sw/bin/fish

It's work correctly.

But, I have some question again @malob .

❯ echo $NIX_PATH
darwin-config=/Users/r17/.nixpkgs/darwin-configuration.nix nixpkgs=/Users/r17/.config/nixpkgs/nixpkgs.nix /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels /Users/r17/.nix-defexpr/channels

Why darwin-config reference to some path, even though the file doesn't exist.

[malob]

But, I have some question again @malob .

❯ echo $NIX_PATH
darwin-config=/Users/r17/.nixpkgs/darwin-configuration.nix nixpkgs=/Users/r17/.config/nixpkgs/nixpkgs.nix /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels /Users/r17/.nix-defexpr/channels
Why darwin-config reference to some path, even though the file doesn't exist.

Why darwin-config reference to some path, even though the file doesn't exist.

@ri7nz, my system also has darwin-config listed on my NIX_PATH pointing to the same file. I believe this is the default location where nix-darwin looks for it's configuration when not using Flakes.

In a (non-Flakes) traditional setup darwin-rebuild builds the configuration pointed to by darwin-config in the NIX_PATH, and you can use the nix.nixPath option to explicitly set is to point to a different location. But for Flakes users this doesn't matter. Perhaps nix-darwin should be updated so that darwin-config isn't added to nix.nixPath when using Flakes just to keep things a little tidier ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[r17x]

@malob Nevermind for my question before. it's work correctly right now. Thank you

Anyway, do you know how to make linux configuration in flake.nix since flake.nix have a darwinConfiguration ? I want to run current nixpkgs config to WSL2

[malob]

I've only played around with WSL2 a little bit, so I'm not that knowledgeable here.

One thing I'm almost certain you can do is install Nix in a non-NixOS distribution, e.g., Ubuntu, and use a standalone home-manager configuration to manage things. You can create a homeConfigurations output in your flake, like I have here:

nixpkgs/flake.nix

Lines 137 to 153 in 1540c7b

	homeConfigurations.malo = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration rec {
	inherit (primaryUserInfo) username;
	system = "x86_64-linux";
	stateVersion = homeManagerStateVersion;
	homeDirectory = "/home/${username}";
	pkgs = import inputs.nixpkgs-unstable {
	inherit system;
	inherit (nixpkgsConfig) config overlays;
	};
	configuration = {
	imports = attrValues self.homeManagerModules ++ singleton {
	home.user-info = primaryUserInfo // {
	nixConfigDirectory = "${homeDirectory}/.config/nixpkgs";
	};
	};
	};
	};

For more details have a look at their documentation for standalone configurations using flakes: https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.html#sec-flakes-standalone

It might also be possible to setup NixOS with WSL2. If that's the case you could create a nixosConfigurations output in your flake: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Flakes#Using_nix_flakes_with_NixOS

Though I wouldn't expect there to be much benefit to using NixOS with WSL2 vs Ubuntu with Nix installed and a standalone home-manager env.

[malob]

Looks like a proper NixOS install is possible with WSL2. See here: https://github.com/nix-community/NixOS-WSL