bug: home-manager installation deleted my `~/.config/home-manager/home.nix` file

[samuela]

Are you following the right branch?

• [X] My Nixpkgs and Home Manager versions are in sync

Is there an existing issue for this?

• [X] I have searched the existing issues

Issue description

I just ran the installer off of master two days ago and it overwrote my perfectly customized home.nix config 😟 Unfortunately I did not log exactly which commit this was, but I can confirm that it did destroy my home.nix. In particular, I ran

nix-channel --add "https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz" home-manager
nix-channel --update
# See https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/2564#issuecomment-994943471
export NIX_PATH="${NIX_PATH:+$NIX_PATH:}$HOME/.nix-defexpr/channels:/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels"
nix-shell "<home-manager>" -A install
home-manager switch

Maintainer CC

No response

System information

- system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 5.15.0-1030-gcp, Ubuntu, 20.04.5 LTS (Focal Fossa), nobuild`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `yes`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.11.1`
 - channels(root): `"nixpkgs"`
 - channels(sam.ainsworth): `"home-manager, nixgl"`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs`

[ncfavier]

The default configuration path was changed in https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/commit/cae54dc45c0d61c99c1dc8b04bc42f36c76f9771 from ~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix to ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix. Maybe your old home.nix is still in the old path?

[samuela]

on further investigation i believe this was actually due to the location of home.nix moving from ~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix to ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix. The UX here is a bit awkward. How're users supposed to know to move their configurations?

EDIT: @ncfavier beat me to it!

[ncfavier]

You don't have to run the installer every time you update. If you hadn't, the next switch would have warned you about the deprecated path.

Maybe we could add a check for ~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix here just in case?

[samuela]

You don't have to run the installer every time you update.

Yeah, unfortunately I'm in a situation where I need to reinstall nix and home-manager (automatically) on every boot

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