How can I customize ZSH theme w/ NixOS?

notfed · July 24, 2021, 7:36pm

I’m using NiXOS+Home Manager, I use zsh and I’d like to use a custom theme, custom.zsh-theme.

In non-NixOS-land this means placing the theme file in $HOME/. oh-my-zsh/themes, then setting $ZSH_THEME to, in this case, “custom”.

But in NixOS, this directory points to the read-only path /nix/store/.../oh-my-zsh/....

How do I do it?

austin · July 25, 2021, 4:58am

Have you tried using programs.zsh.ohMyZsh.theme?

notfed · July 25, 2021, 4:13pm

Ok, so let’s say I do programs.zsh.ohJMyZsh.theme = "custom". It’s going to complain because “custom” doesn’t exist, right? How do I get my custom theme into the themes directory?

abathur · July 25, 2021, 4:50pm

I don’t know (because I don’t use zsh and have never used ohmyzsh or home-manager) but:

HM already appears to have an option for customizing ohmyzsh

github.com

nix-community/home-manager/blob/f0fc2a8702d03211974e597f2f5df1258e6669cb/modules/programs/zsh.nix#L140-L149

    
      
          custom = mkOption {
            default = "";
            type = types.str;
            example = "$HOME/my_customizations";
            description = ''
              Path to a custom oh-my-zsh package to override config of
              oh-my-zsh. See <link xlink:href="https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/Customization"/>
              for more information.
            '';
          };

ohmyzsh already has a theme customization subsection on their wiki
A github code search turns up multiple ways others are already using this, including:

https://github.com/maxdevjs/dotfiles-nixos/blob/bf32db080e5a8f802c383f06aa9b9e6714d26e7a/shells/zsh.nix#L14-L17
and

github.com

vdrizheruk/nixos/blob/0055be6583ca621fe1519565aa56808004eee13e/nix-config/generic/shell.nix#L54-L55

    
      
          ohMyZsh.custom = "${pkgs.nur.repos.izorkin.oh-my-zsh-custom}"; 
          ohMyZsh.theme = "rkj-mod";

notfed · July 26, 2021, 3:20am

This worked. Thank you for helping me love NixOS!