Are there better alternatives to the impermanence module?

Different-Name · June 15, 2025, 6:13pm

Update:

It looks like the day after I made the original post, a HUGE PR was made by the maintainer introducing a bunch of updates to the module <3

github.com/nix-community/impermanence

Home Manager module v2, systemd mounts, options refactoring, tests and more

master ← home-manager-v2

opened 09:35AM - 25 May 25 UTC

talyz

+1196 -1372

This PR is a pretty big refactoring and changes a lot of things. When viewing th…e diffs, I would recommend hiding whitespace changes. ## Replace the current Home Manager module implementation with an interface to the NixOS module This is the main goal. The other changes, while useful on their own, were mostly done to make this doable. This should close a whole bunch of issues related to the Home Manager module and massively lessen the maintenance burden of the project, since there's now one unified implementation instead of two disparate ones. This also means that things that were previously not possible, such as using real bind mounts, now are. The main caveat is that the NixOS module has to be imported into the same configuration as Home Manager for this to work. I can't find any good reason to use the Home Manager module exclusively, but if you have one - do tell. There are some minor UI and feature differences, mainly on the positive side, but assertions should have been added for any removed or changed functionality. Fixes #247, fixes #248, fixes #207, fixes #184, fixes #177, fixes #142, fixes #130, fixes #45, fixes #198, fixes #232, fixes #256, fixes #257 ## Move all submodule options out to a separate file This makes it possible to import shared submodule options where needed, reducing duplication and complexity. ## Use `systemd.mounts` instead of `fileSystems` for bind mounts This removes the need for the `home` option, as the home directory can be deduced automatically. This was previously not possible due to a long-standing issue in nixpkgs: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/24570. It also greatly simplifies the `neededForBoot` directory creation, since it's either handled automatically by systemd in the initrd or easily done in the `postMountCommands`. Fixes #179, fixes #222, fixes #227 ## Allow setting file linking method For some files, it's preferable to use symlinks over bind mounts - for example when a program wants to rename the file temporarily. This adds an option (`method = "symlink"`) to keep a file a symlink even when the file exists, which would otherwise trigger the usage of a bind mount. Closes #146 ## Add basic NixOS tests Test the basic and critical functionality of the modules. The tests can be run with `nix flake check` and are run automatically in the CI checks. Should have been added a long time ago - I've just been lazy :) cc @Ma27 @eyJhb @nazarewk @MattSturgeon @colemickens @SrEstegosaurio @DaRacci @mjm @collinarnett @zackattackz

Thank you Talyz, I appreciate the hard work!