# Home-Manger Cross Compilation?

**URL:** https://discourse.nixos.org/t/home-manger-cross-compilation/81009
**Category:** Help
**Created:** [November 6, 2026, 9:25pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/home-manger-cross-compilation/81009 "2026-11-06T21:25:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Enzy](https://discourse.nixos.org/user_avatar/discourse.nixos.org/enzy/32/38606_2.png) [@Enzy](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/Enzy)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2026, 9:25pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/home-manger-cross-compilation/81009/1 "2026-11-06T21:25:02Z")

</div>

I am partly asking this question so that future ppl hopefully don’t have to suffer as much as I do. I am more or less a nix beginner and currently I am trying to make an sd-card image for a raspberry pi 4 with my custom nixos config.

Pretty much everything works well, except that home manager fails to compile its packages (I am using home-manager as a nixos module in a flake).

I get this output:

```auto
error: Cannot build '/nix/store/46cy3f079mhzhbzrk17mgxhmvzzi8pll-home-manager-path.drv'.
       Reason: platform mismatch
       Required system: 'aarch64-linux'
       Current system: 'x86_64-linux'
error: Cannot build '/nix/store/m8shf11gd945zk87jhc6nq7xc0gz0fx5-home-manager-generation.drv'.
       Reason: 1 dependency failed.
       Output paths:
         /nix/store/9h5jzl21jwxrn2gi1qx73wzigigbdb2j-home-manager-generation
error: Cannot build '/nix/store/xdqg140pa356rgrcrjxy17dmfh55qhhm-unit-home-manager-enzy.service.drv'.
       Reason: 1 dependency failed.
       Output paths:
         /nix/store/y6gkk23xszrymfypqfyjm20glwhq6plg-unit-home-manager-enzy.service
error: Cannot build '/nix/store/2vnlbyw67v6hyqanxffhlhiwv6b04qqr-system-units.drv'.
...

```

Nothing that I tried enabled cross compilation in home manager:

```auto
nixpkgs.hostPlatform.system = "aarch64-linux";
nixpkgs.buildPlatform.system = "x86_64-linux";

# or setting

environment.systemPackages = [
  home-manager.packages."aarch64-linux".default
];

# or setting
programs.home-manager.package = pkgs.pkgsCross.raspberryPi.home-manager;

```

Generally, is it even possible to cross compile with home manager? I know that I can set `boot.binfmt.emulatedSystems = ["aarch64-linux"]` but that results in reaaaaly slow compilation times and i wanna avoid that.

[Here is my current configuration](https://codeberg.org/Enzy/tiny-linux-drivers/src/commit/7fec6259aa30e891fe938332ab450ed350d53cee)

Cheers!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Enzy](https://discourse.nixos.org/user_avatar/discourse.nixos.org/enzy/32/38606_2.png) [@Enzy](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/Enzy)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2026, 9:32pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/home-manger-cross-compilation/81009/2 "2026-11-06T21:32:23Z")

</div>

PS having both `boot.binfmt.emulatedSystems = ["aarch64-linux"]` set and

```auto
nixpkgs.hostPlatform.system = "aarch64-linux";
nixpkgs.buildPlatform.system = "x86_64-linux";

```

seems to result in most packages being built without emulation (fast) but the ones that are failing for me with emulation. This is acceptable but requires the host to set `boot.binfmt.emulatedSystems = ["aarch64-linux"]` in their configuration outside of e.g. my flake..