Nix: Configuring program specific configurations - The basics

Nix and Home Manager - Getting setup
➜ Nix: Configuring program specific configurations - The basics

In this article, we dive into the process of adding the bat program with custom configurations to your Nix and Home Manager setup. bat is a feature-rich alternative to the traditional cat command, offering syntax highlighting and advanced functionalities for file concatenation and display. By following our step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to integrate bat into your Nix environment and configure it to suit your specific needs.

Configuring program specific configurations

For programs where specific configuration is needed, the nix configuration will look at little different. In order to demonstrate, lets start with bat. We are going to use the nix package and the following configuration flags:

--italic-text='always'
--theme='Dracula'

Assuming bat is not installed you should get a similar output to this when running the following command:

$ cat ~/.config/bat/config
[bat error]: '/home/daniel/.config/bat/config': No such file or directory (os error 2)

After we run through the next steps of configuring, we will get a far different result.

Lets start by updating our home.nix file with the following:

$ vim ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix
{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
 	programs.bat = {
		enable = true;
		config = {
			theme = "Dracula";
			italic-text = "always";
		};
	};
}

Save the file and run home-manager switch.

$ home-manager switch
$ bat ~/.config/bat/config

And you will see bat open and show the configuration we specified above with no “not found messages”. Notice when running ls -l ~/.config/bat/config that it is actually a symbolic link to the nix home manager directory. This allows us to manage the dotfiles and programs in home.nix. If we remove or change any configurations and run home-manager switch, those changes will be applied and available. This also goes for completely removing programs.bat. This results in the configs plus the actual program would be removed. Give it a try and see what you get.

This example using bat is definitely simple but demonstrates the ground work needed to start converting your more complex programs and configurations.

The wrap-up

VSCode Nix language support
Install via VSCode Marketplace

In conclusion, we have added the bat program and configurations via Nix and Home Manager. We have also avoided using OS specific package managers and conditional configurations for each OS. Additionally, linked above, you have the VSCode Nix language support plugin that will help in your management of your Nix based dotfiles. Start elevating your dotfile experience today and unleash your full potential as a terminal power user.