nix-darwin
Nix modules for darwin, /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
for macOS.
This project aims to bring the convenience of a declarative system approach to macOS. nix-darwin is built up around Nixpkgs, quite similar to NixOS.
Installing
To install nix-darwin, a working installation of Nix is required.
If you wish to use nix-darwin with flakes, please refer to the flakes section.
nix-build https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/archive/master.tar.gz -A installer
./result/bin/darwin-installer
NOTE: the system activation scripts don’t overwrite existing etc files, so files like
/etc/bashrc
and/etc/zshrc
won’t be updated by default. If you didn’t use the installer or skipped some of the options you’ll have to take care of this yourself. Either modify the existing file to source/import the one from/etc/static
or remove it. Some examples:
mv /etc/bashrc /etc/bashrc.before-nix-darwin
echo 'if test -e /etc/static/bashrc; then . /etc/static/bashrc; fi' | sudo tee -a /etc/bashrc
Updating
The installer will configure a channel for this repository.
nix-channel --update darwin
darwin-rebuild changelog
NOTE: If you are using Nix as a daemon service the channel for that will be owned by root. Use
sudo -i nix-channel --update darwin
instead.
Uninstalling
To run the latest version of the uninstaller, you can run the following command:
nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" run nix-darwin#darwin-uninstaller
If that command doesn’t work for you, you can try the locally installed uninstaller:
darwin-uninstaller
Example configuration
Configuration lives in ~/.nixpkgs/darwin-configuration.nix
. Check out
modules/examples for some example configurations.
{ pkgs, ... }:
{
# List packages installed in system profile. To search by name, run:
# $ nix-env -qaP | grep wget
environment.systemPackages =
[ pkgs.vim
];
# Auto upgrade nix package and the daemon service.
services.nix-daemon.enable = true;
nix.package = pkgs.nix;
}
Flakes
nix-darwin aims for both non-flake and flake configurations to be well supported despite flakes being an experimental feature in Nix.
Step 1. Creating flake.nix
Getting started from scratch
If you don't have an existing `configuration.nix`, you can run the following commands to generate a basic `flake.nix` inside `~/.config/nix-darwin`: ```bash mkdir -p ~/.config/nix-darwin cd ~/.config/nix-darwin nix flake init -t nix-darwin sed -i '' "s/simple/$(scutil --get LocalHostName)/" flake.nix ``` Make sure to change `nixpkgs.hostPlatform` to `aarch64-darwin` if you are using Apple Silicon.Migrating from an existing configuration.nix
Add the following to `flake.nix` in the same folder as `configuration.nix`: ```nix { description = "John's darwin system"; inputs = { nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixpkgs-24.05-darwin"; nix-darwin.url = "github:LnL7/nix-darwin"; nix-darwin.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs"; }; outputs = inputs@{ self, nix-darwin, nixpkgs }: { darwinConfigurations."Johns-MacBook" = nix-darwin.lib.darwinSystem { modules = [ ./configuration.nix ]; }; }; } ``` Make sure to replace `Johns-MacBook` with your hostname which you can find by running `scutil --get LocalHostName`. Make sure to set `nixpkgs.hostPlatform` in your `configuration.nix` to either `x86_64-darwin` (Intel) or `aarch64-darwin` (Apple Silicon).Step 2. Installing nix-darwin
Instead of using darwin-installer
, you can just run darwin-rebuild switch
to install nix-darwin. As darwin-rebuild
won’t be installed in your PATH
yet, you can use the following command:
nix run nix-darwin -- switch --flake ~/.config/nix-darwin
Step 3. Using nix-darwin
After installing, you can run darwin-rebuild
to apply changes to your system:
darwin-rebuild switch --flake ~/.config/nix-darwin
Using flake inputs
Inputs from the flake can also be passed into darwinSystem
. These inputs are then
accessible as an argument inputs
, similar to pkgs
and lib
, inside the configuration.
# in flake.nix
nix-darwin.lib.darwinSystem {
modules = [ ./configuration.nix ];
specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
}
# in configuration.nix
{ pkgs, lib, inputs }:
# inputs.self, inputs.nix-darwin, and inputs.nixpkgs can be accessed here
Documentation
Reference documentation of all the options is available here.
This can also be accessed locally using man 5 configuration.nix
.
darwin-help
will open a HTML version of the manpage in the default browser.
Furthermore there’s darwin-option
to introspect the settings of a system and its available options.
NOTE:
darwin-option
is only available to non-flake installations.
$ darwin-option services.activate-system.enable
Value:
true
Default:
false
Example:
no example
Description:
Whether to activate system at boot time.
There’s also a small wiki https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/wiki about specific topics, like macOS upgrades.
Tests
There are basic tests that run sanity checks for some of the modules, you can run them like this:
# run all tests
nix-build release.nix -A tests
# or just a subset
nix-build release.nix -A tests.environment-path
Contributing
Let’s make Nix on macOS awesome!
Don’t hesitate to contribute modules or open an issue.
To build your configuration with local changes you can run this. This
flag can also be used to override darwin-config or nixpkgs, for more
information on the -I
flag look at the nix-build manpage.
darwin-rebuild switch -I darwin=.
If you’re adding a module, please add yourself to meta.maintainers
, for example
meta.maintainers = [
lib.maintainers.alice or "alice"
];
options.services.alicebot = # ...
The or
operator takes care of graceful degradation when lib
from Nixpkgs
goes out of sync.
Also feel free to contact me if you have questions,
- Matrix - @daiderd:matrix.org, you can find me in #macos:nixos.org
- @LnL7 on twitter