Nix config

Install nix

macOS

In order to perform a multi-user install of nix on macOS, follow these steps.

The first order of business is to make sure diskutil is in your $PATH. If it isn't, add it

$ export PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH

Now you can go ahead and run the installer

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --darwin-use-unencrypted-nix-store-volume --daemon

This should take you through the process in a nice and straight-forward way.

Once the installation finishes, it should print something like

Try it! Open a new terminal, and type:

nix-shell -p nix-info --run "nix-info -m"

It's possible that this won't work straight away, and you may get something like

error: could not set permissions on '/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user' to 755: Operation not permitted

Don't worry. The issue is very likely that the nix-daemon isn't up and running just yet. Give it a few seconds and try again.

A note on SSL issues: If you're getting errors like

Problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?) (77)

at later stages, there might be that /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt is a dead symlink. This can be fixed by removing that file and creating a new symlink

sudo ln -s /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

Flakes

Now we're ready to bootstrap and install the actual configuration. First, we need to install nixFlakes in our environment.

$ nix-env -iA nixpkgs.nixFlakes

Then we need to edit /etc/nix/nix.conf and add:

experimental-features = nix-command flakes

Once that's done, we should be able to bootstrap the system with a minimal configuration.

nix build .#darwinConfigurations.bootstrap.system
./result/sw/bin/darwin-rebuild switch --flake .#bootstrap

Open up a new terminal session and run

$ darwin-rebuild switch --flake .#macbook

Tada! Everything should be installed and ready to go.

NOTE: It's a good idea to make sure that any existing installation of nix-darwin is uninstalled before you begin. There may be crap remaining in /etc/static. Also, you should remember to backup existing etc files

$ sudo mv /etc/bashrc /etc/bashrc.backup-before-darwin
$ sudo mv /etc/zshrc /etc/zshrc.backup-before-darwin

NOTE 2: It's also possible that you may have to backup nix.conf in order for nix-darwin to be able to link it

$ sudo mv /etc/nix/nix.conf /etc/nix/nix.conf.backup-before-darwin

NOTE 3: nix-darwin might also complain about linking ca-certificates.crt. That stuff we may or may not have had to take care of earlier. Just back that up, rebuild, and watch nix-darwin link it.