bug: home manager unable to switch when .config/home-manager is a symlink

[golddranks]

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 have been using home manager with flakes for a week without problems, having home.nix, flake.nix and flake.lock under ~/.config/home-manager/. Now I decided to move my home manager config to a git repo where I keep my other systems' (and this systems' configuration.nix) config too. It is checked out at ~/nixos_configs. So, make ~/.config/home-manager a symlink pointing ~/nixos_configs/SYSNAME/home-manager. As I test home-manager switch, it fails with following:

error: getting status of '/nix/store/2igw8w883ri968qz76rv8nw2zi8vdpcg-source/mame/home-manager': No such file or directory
error: getting status of '/nix/store/2igw8w883ri968qz76rv8nw2zi8vdpcg-source/mame/home-manager': No such file or directory
error: getting status of '/nix/store/2igw8w883ri968qz76rv8nw2zi8vdpcg-source/mame/home-manager': No such file or directory

Examining /nix/store/2igw8w883ri968qz76rv8nw2zi8vdpcg-source reveals that it's an exact copy of ~/nixos_configs except that it doesn't contain the ~/nixos_configs/SYSNAME/home-manager dir!

Trying to clean things up, uninstalling also fails:

$ home-manager uninstall
This will remove Home Manager from your system.
Really uninstall Home Manager? [y/n] y
Switching to empty Home Manager configuration...
error: file 'home-manager/home-manager/home-manager.nix' was not found in the Nix search path (add it using $NIX_PATH or -I)

       at «none»:0: (source not available)

So clearly there's something weird happening; home manager seems to be doing something with the home-manager dir that makes symlinks behave differently from actual directories.

Everything returns to normal, if I move the directory back.

After this, I tried symlinking each of the files home.nix, flake.nix and flake.lock separately. This setup works.

Maintainer CC

@rycee

System information

nix-shell -p nix-info --run "nix-info -m"
 - system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 6.1.41, NixOS, 23.05 (Stoat), 23.05.2478.bd836ac5e5a7`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `yes`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.13.3`
 - channels(kon): `""`
 - channels(root): `"nixos-23.05"`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos`

[sullyj3]

After this, I tried symlinking each of the files home.nix, flake.nix and flake.lock separately. This setup works.

Fwiw I only have flake.nix linked, and it works for me. I think it understands that any imports should be relative to the real location, rather than the link location.

[stale[bot]]

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