Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
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Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
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Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#2It would be nice to set up immutable config down to the granularity of a git commit, sharing it as a single file, and be able to reproduce that setup on anyone's machine. Instant onboarding and mirrored production (barring secrets).
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#3It would be nice to set up immutable config down to the granularity of a git commit, sharing it as a single file, and be able to reproduce that setup on anyone's machine. Instant onboarding and mirrored production (barring secrets).
For me, this is the holy grail. Every time I switch laptops, I lift all my config files and such over, but there's always so many system level configs and other things that you have to go and manually fiddle. On top of that, some apps don't really behave well when you just move config files to e.g. under a different username etc. Would be nice if there was a comprehensive solution to this problem, need to try nix-darwin out.
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#4only thing i'd add is mas for mac app store apps you want to ensure are installed but otherwise i run pretty much the same setup.
When i install a fresh macos i have two commands to run - install nix using the determinate systems installer, then apply my nix config.
It's not quite as streamlined as nixos but good enough.
My biggest remaining pain point is dev envs - i've been leaning into adding a flake in each project, so for example i have a single project that's written in scala 2.13, when i cd into that project dir, the correct jvm version, sbt, intellij etc are installed, some useful env vars and shell aliases etc. - that's all great (i haven't felt the need to adopt denenv.sh or flox yet) but i do find myself wanting a devcontainer sandbox workflow more often these days (blame cli coding "agents"), i lean on vscode for that rather than nix so far. In python (where i spend a lot more time) uv loses a lot of value in nix and i don't like that.
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#5It would be nice to set up immutable config down to the granularity of a git commit, sharing it as a single file, and be able to reproduce that setup on anyone's machine. Instant onboarding and mirrored production (barring secrets).
With the caveat of it not being a portable single file, I find custom image-based Linuxes fill this gap perfectly.
There's of course Fedora Silverblue / Fedora Bootc with https://universal-blue.org/ and https://blue-build.org/ being good examples.
Recent developments have seen the creation of bootc images for non-Fedora distros too, and at this point I've seen quite a few cool arch-bootc custom images, completely customized to the author's desires. See: https://github.com/bootcrew/, https://github.com/tartaria-dev/tartaria
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#6How well does nix-darwin survive macOS updates?
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#7It would be nice to set up immutable config down to the granularity of a git commit, sharing it as a single file, and be able to reproduce that setup on anyone's machine. Instant onboarding and mirrored production (barring secrets).
I haven't used Nix yet, but I have done exactly this a number of times with Guix now. I assume Nix has the same capabilities. In Guix you can specify a home configuration that includes packages, configuration files, and running services all in one manifest.scm file. If you want to make sure that it's isolated from whatever else is set up on the system you can launch that manifest in a container with a single extra flag
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#8I see this:
> The consequence is me, spending a few hours debugging my environment instead of writing code.
But then I also see this:
> I’ve spent a lot of time recently moving my entire workflow into a declarative system using nix.
I can see how this can be beneficial for someone who switches systems very often, reinstalls their OS from scratch very often, or just derives a lot of pleasure/peace of mind knowing that their dev env is immutable.
I change computers once every 6 years or so, maybe more. To me this looks like exchanging a couple (hypothetical) hours of debugging 6 years in the future by tens of (guaranteed) hours trying to climb up the nix learning cliff.
I am happy that it works for the author though, and knowing that it's possible is good in case my particular development circumstances change.
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#9How well does nix-darwin survive macOS updates?
Installed nix-darwin on 26.0, on a fresh M4 air. I have updated since updated macos to 26.2 through the normal method, no wacky nix stuff there. no issues. no clue on major version changes, but nix-darwin is essentially the nix config language parsed to then run the necessary set of scripts.
Re: Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin
#10It would be nice to set up immutable config down to the granularity of a git commit, sharing it as a single file, and be able to reproduce that setup on anyone's machine. Instant onboarding and mirrored production (barring secrets).
this is basically the purpose of nix flakes, which take in inputs (usually git repositories) and provide outputs (compiled files, docker images, etc). it's a pain to get going, but not tremendously difficult with some googling. It's a lot easier with AI as well.