It builds “just fine”, but ~/.config/autostart/patch-gtk-firefox-corners.desktop
doesn’t actually exist afterwards (yes I logged in and out and rebooted… because I’ve run into that before). home-manager-user.service
complains, but not about this:
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11517]: Starting Home Manager activation
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11517]: Activating checkFilesChanged
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11517]: Activating checkLinkTargets
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: Please do one of the following:
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: - Move or remove the files below and try again.
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: - In standalone mode, use 'home-manager switch -b backup' to back up
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: files automatically.
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: - When used as a NixOS or nix-darwin module, set
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: 'home-manager.backupFileExtension'
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: to, for example, 'backup' and rebuild.
Jun 08 20:13:52 t480 hm-activate-user[11753]: Existing file '/home/user/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-hm-fonts.conf.backup' would be clobbered by backing up '/home/user/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/10-hm-fonts.conf'
Removed those just in case, this time built “just fine” but still not actually in place.
Also was trying to debug this with a to-be-left-unnamed-because-I’m-not-proud-of-using-it LLM (which generally suck for Nix, I know and have been bitten by this many times, but… desperation), got suggested to create a 00-hello.desktop
file just for testing purposes like this:
".config/autostart/00-hello.desktop" = {
text = ''
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Hello Test
Exec=/usr/bin/true
Type=Application
'';
};
and it works (generates) just fine.
warning: Git tree '/home/user/.git_repos/nixos-config' is dirty
> Building NixOS configuration
warning: Git tree '/home/user/.git_repos/nixos-config' is dirty
these 8 derivations will be built:
/nix/store/fzgajh583ydy01ci6n3kkp9g08plfias-hm_.configautostart00hello.desktop.drv
/nix/store/rr3452rjq1zwr4zrxd8pkcyvij5w3iqi-home-manager-files.drv
/nix/store/a7sphy967wlfqy2igan7byvgpvqpphhv-home-manager-generation.drv
/nix/store/gjhw3bsaik4h7b2g7l1dl4a8w67avg44-unit-home-manager-user.service.drv
/nix/store/4g0bk9nqs12ki118ksdl0nv8nisim1jk-system-units.drv
/nix/store/d2zdvizcxbmfr2vvnili825bc9skhng1-etc.drv
/nix/store/305ysr4098s6qm0y77xvn1cf70w61313-nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe5.drv
/nix/store/ykxyaybcifg9fn7ki5ccw8l31in4jr22-nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe5.drv
hm_.configautostart00hello.desktop> building '/nix/store/fzgajh583ydy01ci6n3kkp9g08plfias-hm_.configautostart00hello.desktop.drv'
home-manager-files> building '/nix/store/rr3452rjq1zwr4zrxd8pkcyvij5w3iqi-home-manager-files.drv'
home-manager-generation> building '/nix/store/a7sphy967wlfqy2igan7byvgpvqpphhv-home-manager-generation.drv'
unit-home-manager-user.service> building '/nix/store/gjhw3bsaik4h7b2g7l1dl4a8w67avg44-unit-home-manager-user.service.drv'
system-units> building '/nix/store/4g0bk9nqs12ki118ksdl0nv8nisim1jk-system-units.drv'
etc> building '/nix/store/d2zdvizcxbmfr2vvnili825bc9skhng1-etc.drv'
nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe> building '/nix/store/305ysr4098s6qm0y77xvn1cf70w61313-nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe5.drv'
nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe> building '/nix/store/ykxyaybcifg9fn7ki5ccw8l31in4jr22-nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe5.drv'
┏━ Dependency Graph:
┃ ┌─ ✔ hm_.configautostart00hello.desktop
┃ ┌─ ✔ home-manager-files
┃ ┌─ ✔ home-manager-generation
┃ ┌─ ✔ unit-home-manager-user.service
┃ ┌─ ✔ system-units ⏱ 2s
┃ ┌─ ✔ etc ⏱ 1s
┃ ┌─ ✔ nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe5
┃ ✔ nixos-system-t480-25.11.20250607.3e3afe5
┣━━━ Builds
┗━ ∑ ⏵ 0 │ ✔ 8 │ ⏸ 0 │ Finished at 20:17:50 after 1m0s
> Comparing changes
<<< /run/current-system
>>> /tmp/nh-os1fy0X8/result/specialisation/kde_uid1000
Added packages:
[A.] #1 hm_.configautostart00hello.desktop <none>
Closure size: 2309 -> 2310 (7 paths added, 6 paths removed, delta +1, disk usage +456B).
> Apply the config?
[y/N]
Side note: home-manager can make desktop entries in a more structured way, if you want, with the xdg.desktopEntries options.
Know about that, but these specifically are autostart entries and not menu entries, though below (and above) there’s another thing for hacking up the upstream provided firefox menu entry (which doesn’t work either, actually) so…
I’m weird. My entire config (and the readme page on it doubly so) reflects that now that I think about it.