[Solved] Difference between `imports` and `require`

Help
1

Let’s say I have the following ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
  imports = [
    ./helix.nix
  ];
  ...
}

If I change the attribute imports into require, home manager would still build my config. So it seems like they are doing the same thing. Is there any thing I should be wary of that could break my config when I use require instead?

2

I don’t remember require to be a thing… I’ve looked into the nixpkgs, home-manager, and even nix builtins documentation, but couldn’t find it. Could you please share where you saw it used?

home manager would still build my config.

Maybe it builds it, but ignores the values you provide:
In the end, you return an attrset that has an array of path as values for a require key;
It’s likely that home-manager doesn’t know what to do with it, but doesn’t fail.

For example, you could have

{ # ...
  foo = "bar";
}

and still expect your configuration to build properly.

3

require is really old syntax IIRC - you probably shouldn’t use it anymore

it is part of the module system so it would work in a number of places, including home-manager

2 Likes
4

I remember I wanted to create an option require for nix2vim project and ran into an issue. I wonder why we don’t remove it? Probably, at this point even deprecation notice is not needed

5

Yeah, require is ignored entirely:

Probably it was just forgotten about?