Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

rednafi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 152 posts

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#41

Post by blop »

I use syncthing to automatically sync my dotfiles git directory across PC/laptops, and stow to manually update symlinks when I add a new dotfile (the content of existing dotfiles is synced by syncthing already)

That way I don't have to remember to commit+push+pull changes to existing dotfiles (like bashrc or vimrc which I edit often) to sync them to other machines, it happens automatically in almost real time as soon as the file is saved on one of my machines (syncthing uses inotify to detect changes on monitored directories)

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#42

Post by linsomniac »

QwenGlazer9000 wrote: post #30
colordrops wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shy from Nix because of supposed complexity but it really is the only real solution to this sort of problem. It's not really that much more difficult to learn, and in fact if you are willing, AI works really well generating nix config.

It's not complexity its questionable documentation. Picking up Nix is really hard yet the best we got is a mishmash of unofficial recourses and many of them are out of date and/or focus on the packaging side which is terrible for introduction.

I spent a year dabbling in NixOS, getting a few "toy" setups.

About 6 weeks ago I installed NixOS on a spare laptop and did 100% of the configuration through Claude Codex. Initially I copied "/etc/nixos" off to my existing workstation, until Claude Code bootstrapped it enough to run on the NixOS machine.

I've been running it as my primary workstation for the last 3-4 weeks, and it's been great! 100% configured by Claude Code or Codex CLI.

Configuring a machine via Nix lang is not that fun. Configuring a machine via English is.

And I've thrown some curveballs at this setup. I asked it for gitbutler-cli, which NixOS doesn't/didn't provide, and it was able to package up and build it. It's running Sway. I have my secrets and configs in SOPS+Home Manager.

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#43

Post by tfrancisl »

pkulak wrote: post #18

Once you hit the Chezmoi stage, you're only about 6 months from Nix and Home Manager. I mean, why climb _almost_ to the top of a mountain and then just sit down?

Or nix without home manager, and ideally without flakes as well. Two solutions looking for problems, IME.

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#44

Post by sham1 »

pkulak wrote: post #19
drdexebtjl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it doesn't work on macOS, unlike Nix.

Or hardware.

It absolutely works with hardware. And it's not that difficult to add channels for extra software like a tainted Linux kernel.

And in return one gets a saner programming language than the Nix language.

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#45

Post by linsomniac »

halostatue wrote: post #32
pkulak wrote: post #18

Once you hit the Chezmoi stage, you're only about 6 months from Nix and Home Manager. I mean, why climb _almost_ to the top of a mountain and then just sit down?

I've bounced off Nix every time I tried it, before I even started trying something like Home Manager. I've been using (and contributing to) chezmoi for ~6 years now. Given that it has first-class integration with secrets managers, I suspect that it does things that Home Manager can't.

>I've bounced off Nix every time I tried it, before I even started trying something like Home Manager.

I did too. Until I tried configuring it with Claude Code. I'll give you my money back guarantee on it.

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#46

Post by solatic »

pkulak wrote: post #18

Once you hit the Chezmoi stage, you're only about 6 months from Nix and Home Manager. I mean, why climb _almost_ to the top of a mountain and then just sit down?

I ran NixOS for a while, before I switched to Apple Silicon, so I consider myself fairly well-versed-enough (although nowhere near an expert) in Nix and the Nix ecosystem. My last four jobs have all issued me MacBook Pros; the last three with Apple Silicon.

Ultimately, my workplace setup is what has the most gravity. And the most I can get most workplaces to standardize on is Homebrew for package management of off-the-shelf software. Nix is so far outside of the wheelhouse for most engineers that I can't even propose it. It would be too much of a distraction for too many people for too long that it's just not seen as worth it and it's not worth spending the political capital on the attempt. Employers would literally prefer to run scripts from a whitewashing, barely-auditable Jenkins instance with parameterized jobs than to attempt to figure out how to distribute portable scripts and get everyone's permissions working.

So I need to pick software that will cooperate with other tools in an unstable fashion, rather than software that attempts to fully and exclusively control the environment to provide guarantees. Chezmoi fits. Nix and home-manager do not.

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#47

Post by codethief »

jdxcode wrote: post #28

It’s quite new but I’ve been cooking up some new bootstrapping features with mise which people may find relevant here: https://mise.jdx.dev/bootstrap.html It’s for things like dotfiles, apt/brew packages, and LaunchAgents/systemd. EDIT: I feel a little bad having hijacked this, as someone that hears a lot of opinions about devtools I can definitely say chezmoi is a darling of the community and I highly recommend chec…

Ha, I came here to share this! :)

Thanks so much for your work on mise! I used to be a heavy asdf user but nowadays I'm an even heavier mise user!

Random question while you're here: mise is undergoing pretty heavy development these days and I recently noticed that 1) my coworkers and I are not always on the same version, so some features/bug fixes are not available to everyone, and 2) package registries often don't have the latest mise version.

So I think we need a meta tool manager here to manage the tool manager version. :) Seriously, though, have you considered having mise manage its own version? I think that'd be pretty neat!

Thinking aloud, I guess one way to do this might be to distribute through package registries only a lightweight bootstrap application, which 1) reads the pinned mise version from mise.toml and downloads it as necessary, and 2) sets up a basic shell hook that the active mise version can then hook into(?) I know, this probably sounds a lot easier than it actually is.

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#48

Post by tfrancisl »

reinitctxoffset wrote: post #40
drdexebtjl wrote: post #5

I had similar problems with GNU Stow, but switched to Nix and Home Manager instead. I think Chezmoi's templates and file naming conventions don't click for me, but it's nice to see a good variety in this problem space.

[flagged]

What a snakepit of a comment! I know there are tensions within nix but this feels like a classic case of Chestertons fence at a big scale.

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#49

Post by tfrancisl »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #5

I had similar problems with GNU Stow, but switched to Nix and Home Manager instead. I think Chezmoi's templates and file naming conventions don't click for me, but it's nice to see a good variety in this problem space.

If you like home manager but also like to understand how your "home"/user programs are configured, take a look at hjem!

Re: Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi

#50

Post by jdxcode »

colordrops wrote: post #13
drdexebtjl wrote: post #5

I had similar problems with GNU Stow, but switched to Nix and Home Manager instead. I think Chezmoi's templates and file naming conventions don't click for me, but it's nice to see a good variety in this problem space.

People shy from Nix because of supposed complexity but it really is the only real solution to this sort of problem. It's not really that much more difficult to learn, and in fact if you are willing, AI works really well generating nix config.

how nix-pilled do you have to be to think that nix is the "only real solution" to dotfile managers?
Post reply on HN