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blog/2021/09/08/why-i-threw-out-my-dotfiles/index.html
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<p>Do you manage a <code>.zshrc</code>? <code>.vimrc</code>? <code>tmux.conf</code>? Do you have dozens of configuration files that you manage in a git repo? Or maybe you don&rsquo;t backup any of your configuration at all? Do you also have a bunch of command line utilities that you forget you installed? Or don&rsquo;t remember why you installed them?</p>
<p>Over the years I have collected a number of dotfiles that I have shared across both Linux and macOS machines. I have tried several different ways to manage them, including <a href=https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles>bare git repos</a> and utilities such as <a href=https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/>GNU Stow</a>. These solutions work well enough, but I have since found what I would consider a much better solution for organizing user configuration: <a href=https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager>home-manager</a>.</p>
<h2 id=what-is-home-manager>What is home-manager?</h2>
<p>Before understanding home-manager, it is worth briefly discussing what nix is. <a href=https://nixos.org/>nix</a> is a package manager that original spawned from a <a href=https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf>PhD thesis</a>. Unlike other package managers, it uses symbolic links to keep track of the currently installed packages, keeping around the old ones in case you may want to rollback.</p>
<p>Before understanding home-manager, it is worth briefly discussing what nix is. <a href=https://nixos.org/>nix</a> is a package manager that originally spawned from a <a href=https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf>PhD thesis</a>. Unlike other package managers, it uses symbolic links to keep track of the currently installed packages, keeping around the old ones in case you may want to rollback.</p>
<p>For example, I have used nix to install the package <a href="https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=unstable&show=bind&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=bind">bind</a> which includes <code>dig</code>. You can see that it is available on multiple platforms. The absolute path of <code>dig</code> can be found by running:</p>
<pre tabindex=0><code class=language-console data-lang=console>❯ ls -lh $(which dig)
lrwxr-xr-x 73 root 31 Dec 1969 /run/current-system/sw/bin/dig -&gt; /nix/store/0r4qdyprljd3dki57jn6c6a8dh2rbg9g-bind-9.16.16-dnsutils/bin/dig