FR: Config to default `home-manager` commands to `--impure`

[ilyagr]

I would like there to be a config I could set in flake.nix or home.nix that makes home-manager assume --impure for all invocations (home-manager switch, mainly, but --impure is also needed for home-manager news and who knows what else).

The reason I'd like to use --impure is that I want to share my home.nix between machines. As a result, on my machine ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix is a symlink to a managed with GNU Stow). The only way I could get it to work is to replace ./home.nix in the default flake.nix with ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix, and then use --impure for everything.

I'd prefer to not use flakes at all, but I couldn't get that to work with https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer, which feels safer to use than the default installer (easier to uninstall).

Aside: I found no way to share flake.nix conveniently with Stow. If flake.nix is a symlink, nothing works. But this is both a less important problem and might be more difficult to solve.

Aside 2: With my setup, I also get error messages that seem to imply --impure doesn't propagate everywhere it should. See the first two lines below. I'm not sure whether they have any detrimental effect. I may file this as a separate bug once I make a minimal example or do more research.

$ home-manager switch --impure
error: the path '~/.config/home-manager/home.nix' can not be resolved in pure mode
error: the path '~/.config/home-manager/home.nix' can not be resolved in pure mode
Starting Home Manager activation
Activating checkFilesChanged
Activating checkLaunchAgents
Activating checkLinkTargets
Activating writeBoundary
Activating copyFonts
Activating installPackages
nix profile remove /nix/store/dmybjrwxbs3m65wh54nk75j1k7h3a4yi-home-manager-path
removing 'home-manager-path'
Activating linkGeneration
Cleaning up orphan links from /Users/ilyagr
No change so reusing latest profile generation 2
Creating home file links in /Users/ilyagr
Activating onFilesChange
Activating setupLaunchAgents

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[Andy3153]

I'd like home-manager switch to assume I'm always using the --impure flag as well, because I will always be using it anyways too. Any news on this?

[CobaltSpace]

Is there something wrong with adding home-manager = "home-manager --impure" to aliases? I guess it is clunky, but it seems to work.

[ilyagr]

Is there something wrong with adding home-manager = "home-manager --impure" to aliases? I guess it is clunky, but it seems to work.

I think this is good advice and a good workaround, I might do just that. Thanks!

I also think that having this as a home-manager feature, independent of which shell you use it whether you call it from a script, would be even better. Whether --impure is needed depends on flake.nix, so ideally it should be specified there or adjacently.

[Andy3153]

Is there something wrong with adding home-manager = "home-manager --impure" to aliases? I guess it is clunky, but it seems to work.

It's no longer much of a problem for me because I switched my entire configuration to custom modules and home-manager as a nixos module, so at least I only have to run one command with the impure flag now