CODEWITHSUNDEEP
nixnixos
Pierre-olivier Gendraud
Pierre-olivier Gendraud

Reputation: 1937

How can I create home-nix file from my current configuration

What I think that I've understood about home-manager.

Instead of using

nix-env iA packageToBeInstalled

you write a list of package in a file (/home/nixos/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix that I from now on call just home.nix) you run

home-manager switch

and the package are installed.

But I have already installed some packages with nix-env. (home-manager for instance) I would like to have my configuration save just in home.nix in order to just have to import it and execute home-manager switch to import the exact same configuration in a other OS. Therefore I need a command replicating my configuration in home.nix.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1021

Answers (1)

Robert Hensing
Robert Hensing

Reputation: 7359

I am not aware of a tool that fully automates this.

The nix-env list of installed packages is maintained in ~/.nix-profile/manifest.nix, but does not contain the attribute path, which is the "name" you need to use in such configuration files.

To find the attribute paths for the things you've installed, you may first create an index of sorts based on your current nixpkgs (NIX_PATH etc):

nix-env -qaP >packages.tmp

and then use it to look up each package.

Here's a one-liner that doesn't work for all packages.

nix-env -q | while read name; do grep "$name" <packages.tmp; done

So make sure to read through nix-env -q yourself and look up anything that's missing using for example https://search.nixos.org/packages.

To finalize, remove the imperatively installed packages with nix-env -e, check nix-env -q, and rm packages.tmp.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions