This repository contains the configuration for $HOME, as well as some other things to fine-tune my macOS experience. Most of it is managed with nix and home-manager.

Note: The steps described in this section are written with a clean macOS installation in mind and serve mostly as documentation for myself.

I'm using powerlevel10k as ZSH theme. In order for that theme to actually look good, you'll need to have the MesloLGS NF fonts installed. More specifically, the MesloLGSNerdFontMono-{Bold,BoldItalic,Italic,Regular}.tff fonts.

My terminal emulator of choice is the one that's included with the OS. I've added a custom terminal configuration, based on this one. I've changed the default font to the one mentioned above, changed the default window size, etc.

Going through System Settings and dragging icons in and out of the dock is a bit too tedious for my taste. That's why I created a little script that configures the dock just the way I like:

cd ~/.dotfiles/dock
./configure.zsh

Make sure you have your development tools installed. Running xcode-select --install in your terminal should work just fine, or you could install Xcode in full.

There are several ways to install Nix. You can use the official installer or use the one from determinate systems.

Either one is fine. The one from Determinate Systems has some quality-of-life improvements, such as:

• survives macOS updates (see NixOS/nix#3616)
• doesn't configure channels and enables flake support by default
• offers a built-in way to perform an uninstall

If you went with the official installer, make sure that the experimental-features is set to flakes nix-command repl-flake. You can check by running:

nix show-config

If experimental-features is not set or does not contain flakes, nix-command and repl-flake, set them by configuring Nix:

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix
cat <<EOF >> ~/.config/nix/nix.conf
experimental-features = flakes nix-command repl-flake
EOF

Finally, restart the Nix daemon:

sudo launchctl stop org.nixos.nix-daemon
sudo launchctl start org.nixos.nix-daemon

Now that we have both our development tools and the nix package manager installed, it's time to clone this repository:

git clone [email protected]:kevinbungeneers/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles

Enter the dotfiles directory and run:

nix run home-manager -- switch --flake .

Much like a home, dotfiles are never finished. Every now and then you'll switch things up and add, replace or remove tooling and/or configuration options. Any changes you've made will need to be be activated. From within your dotfiles directory:

home-manager switch --flake .

Note: If your home configuration is named like <user>@<host>, home-manager will automatically pick the right configuration to apply. Otherwise, you'll need to specify your configuration explicitely, like so: home-manager switch --flake ".#<name-of-your-configuration>

With each switch you execute, home-manager will create a new "generation". If you were to break something, you could easily perform a rollback to a previous generation.

List all generations:

home-manager generations

Activating a specific generation:

/nix/store/jyjpp3glrv202sck83y04ji0cl538rjn-home-manager-generation/activate

As time goes by and the number of generations grows, your nix store will inevitably grow too. Running nix store gc won't be as effective, as those binaries are still linked to a home-manager generation.

This is why it's a good idea to remove some older generations from time to time. You can either remove specific generations by doing:

home-manager remove-generations 1 2

Or, remove generations that are older than, for instance, 30 days:

home-manager expire-generations "-30 days"