What is the right way to add configuration to a window manager in NixOS?

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1

I am using leftwm as my window manager, I have been using ~/.config/leftwm/config.toml to configure it. But as I have misconfig it, locked my self out of the terminal yesterday and had to use a booting USB to fix that file, I want to move the configuration into nix so that I can recover to previous generation if things go wrong next time.

I have checked there is no configuration option for leftwm: NixOS Search - Loading...

And also leftwm seems to not support custom config path, so I cannot use pkgs.writeText to generate a text file as derivation and feed it to it.

So right now I think my best bet is to use home-manager's property, and use writeText to connect things together:

home.file.".config/leftwm/config.toml".source = pkgs.writeText "leftwm-config" ''
# some config here
'';

But is there a better way to do this? I do feel comfortable enough for this approach,as it forces me to put the configuration related with leftwm into two different files, and I can foresee that I will change one while forgetting the other one in the future. What is the most idiomatic way to handle this in Nix?

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2

So right now I think my best bet is to use home-manager 's property, and use writeText to connect things together

I do think this is indeed the best option, maybe you could even make a real module for it and contribute it to home-manager?

It forces me to put the configuration related with leftwm into two different files

I don’t quite see how it does that. Is your problem that you are installing your home-manager configuration with the home-manager command? You can integrate home-manager into your nixos configuration with a module, see the Home Manager Manual.

Note also that if you’re using home manager to do this you probably want to do this instead:

xdg.configFile."leftwm/config.toml".text = ''
    # Some config here
'';

Rather than redirecting the file writing through pkgs.writeText and hard-coding the xdg config directory. Alternatively use your .source and just keep your configuration in a separate file like so:

xdg.configFile."leftwm/config.toml".source = ./config.toml;
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3

Thanks. I tried the home.file and xdg.configFile approach, and using them with flake is just awesome. Simple dotfile management. This is what I come up at the end:

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