Way to automatically override home manager collisions?

mothproof · September 14, 2023, 6:38pm

I use home manager as a nixos module and have multiple users. Home manager controls the configuration for some files in the users home directories, which causes collisions. To prevent home manager from terminating, I created an alias that deletes the files that home manager generates before rebuilding.

EX:
sudo rm -rf /home/user1/.config/mimeapps.list &&
sudo rm -rf /home/user1/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list &&
sudo rm -rf /home/user1/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini &&
sudo rm -rf /home/user2/.config/mimeapps.list &&
sudo rm -rf /home/user2/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list &&
sudo rm -rf /home/user2/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini &&
sudo nixos-rebuild switch

The problem with this is that sometimes I’ll have a change to a single users configuration. Home manager will change and overwrite the config files for the user with changes, but not the one without changes. So my alias will delete the config for the un-changed user and they won’t be regenerated. The only way I found to fix this is to make a new change to both users and run my rebuild again.

Is a better way to handle this? Can’t find any information on how to just make home manager ignore collisions. Or maybe I can make my bash alias smarter by detecting changes before deleting?

TLATER · September 14, 2023, 8:29pm

Assuming you’re using the NixOS module, you probably want to use home-manager.backupFileExtension instead of deleting anything. Otherwise use the -b switch for the same effect with the home-manager CLI.

Artturin · September 15, 2023, 4:05am

There is a .force which is not shown in the documentation

github.com

nix-community/home-manager/blob/d9b88b43524db1591fb3d9410a21428198d75d49/modules/lib/file-type.nix#L101


      
              Shell commands to run when file has changed between
              generations. The script will be run
              *after* the new files have been linked
              into place.
          
          
    Note, this code is always run when `recursive` is
              enabled.
            '';
          };
          
          
force = mkOption {
            type = types.bool;
            default = false;
            visible = false;
            description = ''
              Whether the target path should be unconditionally replaced
              by the managed file source. Warning, this will silently
              delete the target regardless of whether it is a file or
              link.
            '';
          };

xdg.configFile."mimeapps.list".force = true;

JanKaifer · January 15, 2024, 7:58pm

Assuming you’re using the NixOS module, you probably want to use home-manager.backupFileExtension instead of deleting anything. Otherwise use the -b switch for the same effect with the home-manager CLI.

The link is dead, this is the source for that option: https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/blob/8c3b2a0cab64a464de9e41a470eecf1318ccff57/nixos/common.nix#L55

TLATER · January 15, 2024, 8:33pm

Odd, seems it has a .xhtml extension now. I updated the link.

JanKaifer · January 15, 2024, 8:46pm

Oh, cool. I was always looking only into Appendix A and I haven’t found it there. That’s why I pasted the source.

Thanks for the info that nixos-specific stuff is in Appendix B.