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Can configuration.nix be a symlink? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by phantomwise@lemmy.ml to c/nix@programming.dev

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Hi! I'm trying out Nix and I'm trying to set up and organize everything. Usually I put all my configs in a directory which is also a git repo and synced to my NAS, using the same subfolders they'd be in, and use GNU Stow to symlink the top-level folders (/dotfiles/home/ to /home/username/, /dotfiles/etc to /etc and /dotfiles/usr to /usr) and let it do its thing. Would it cause problems to also do that for configuration.nix?

On Arch I already had a /dotfiles/etc symlinked to /etc for my custom keyboard layouts, which worked fine... until the update which moved the location of the GUI keyboard layouts. It prevented the update so I undid the symlinks, updated, and put them again to the new location... but somehow it broke everything except the tty and no Wayland compositor I tried would work anymore (and there went my record of having never broken Arch since the first install over a year ago 😅 )

So I'm kinda wary of doing it on an even more critical file... but also I'm very lazy and having everything in a single repo is very convenient... How do you do it?

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[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes you can do that, as I did it before switching to flakes.

[–] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago

Thanks! it's good to know, I was worried about breaking stuff on an unfamiliar system 😅

[–] harsh3466@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Check out gnu stow. Its designed exactly for this.

Edit: added link

[–] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yes that's what I'm using, it's really a great program! But I was wondering if configuration.nix being a symlink would cause problems or if it was fine

Edit: Ah someone else already replied that it was fine 🙂

[–] PoolloverNathan@programming.dev 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To my knowledge, symlinking a Nix file is perfectly fine (though may have interesting behavior with flakes).

[–] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago

Thanks for the reply! Not using flakes so I won't have to worry about that, things are already confusing enough 😁

[–] Arkhive@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The nix wiki actually contains a way to handle this. If you look up “NixOS configuration editors” it has a couple quick commands to make a folder in your user space and link it to the default location of your nix config. This allows you to edit your config without having to escalate privileges of your editor.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The "nix way" to handle this is actually to have all your dotfiles generated and "installed" by Nix as part of your NixOS config (via home-manager), and keep your NixOS config in a git repo that you then nixos-rebuild from (either with nixos-rebuild switch -I nixos-config=. or nixos-rebuild switch --flake ., depending on if you're using flakes or not).

So I’m kinda wary of doing it on an even more critical file

Actually, configuration.nix is not critical to the functioning of the system at all; it is only read at "evaluation time", i.e. when you are using nixos-rebuild. As long as it's under a VCS (i.e. you won't lose the contents by the time you want to nixos-rebuild again), you have nothing to worry about. You can ship a NixOS system without it (in fact that's kind of the default). (unrelated but fun fact: you can also ship a NixOS system without Nix, it's not actually needed for it to run!)

[–] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's reassuring thanks! I'm not planning on using home manager for now because it makes more sense to keep original config files so I can use them both on Nix and Arch, but I'll need to look into it when I set up my media server (I know I know, reasonable people just do a debian server, but that seems really boring 😅 ).

unrelated but fun fact: you can also ship a NixOS system without Nix, it’s not actually needed for it to run! Wait without which Nix? the package manager or the language or something else? (Why is EVERYTHING called "Nix"? 😭 )

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Wait without which Nix? the package manager or the language or something else?

Yes, without the package manager. Shipping "with a language" doesn't make much sense :)