This repository contains system- and application-level configurations for the computers I use. Wanderers beware: it is ever-evolving and fraught with great peril.
Computers, huh? Who would have thought? And yet, here we are. These are the configuration files for my computer systems.
I’ve published them here so that folks such as you or future I might extract some wisdom from them, or perhaps just be humorously confounded. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. Also, this proves a handy place to back them up and pull them down onto new machines.
I use Nix, a purely functional package manager, and various tools within its ecosystem, to declaratively configure the core parts of these systems.
In addition to the Nix configuration files, this repo also contains:
- Personal dotfiles that I link into my home directory
- Grimoire, a command-line interface that simplifies system management tasks
- Shell scripts that do a little of this, a little of that
- Theme files that I use to change the look of my terminal environment
My personal computer is a 2023 14” Apple MacBook Pro that runs on the Apple M2 Pro SoC architecture. I use nix-darwin to manage as much of the system as is possible.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Operating System | macOS 13.2 (Ventura) |
| CPU | 3.49 GHz AArch64 |
| Memory | 16 GB LPDDR5 |
| Storage | 512 GB PCIe 4.0 ×4 SSD |
My work computer is a 2021 14” Apple MacBook Pro that runs on the Apple M1 Pro SoC architecture. I use nix-darwin to manage as much of the system as is possible.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Operating System | macOS 13.2 (Ventura) |
| CPU | 3.2 GHz GHz AArch64 |
| Memory | 32 GB LPDDR5 |
| Storage | 1 TB PCIe 4.0 ×4 SSD |
The root of my Nix configuration is a flake whose outputs are configurations for each of my systems.
System-level configuration is managed by nix-darwin or NixOS, depending on the platform.
Each system’s user-level packages are specified and configured using Home Manager.
I maintain a set of Nix modules loosely separated by area of concern. This helps prevent polluting any given system with unneeded binaries and configuration files, and helps me feel like I’ve really got it together, at least a little bit.
One of the primary tasks I use my systems for is source code editing. My editor of choice is Neovim, which is specified here. Additionally, this module specifies packages that my Neovim configuration relies on for advanced editing features such as Tree-sitter.
I use public key cryptography for encrypting data like emails and sensitive documents, and for authenticating ownership of Internet resources such as Git commits and domain names. This module specifies the GNU Privacy Guard package as well as a convenient terminal UI for it.
This module specifies packages that are used to build or run software. It includes asdf for managing certain programming languages, Fennel (a lovely little Lisp that compiles to Lua), and lots of build-time dependencies—Autoconf, Cmake, et al.
I sometimes find myself needing to engage in some light devops work and this module specifies packages that make those sorts of tasks a bit comfier on the command line.
The Git version control system is a key piece of my daily workflow. This specifes it along with configuration and some supplementary packages, namely Lazygit, a Git terminal UI.
To make it more pleasant to read and edit natural language text, e.g. notes, documentation, short stories, I specify some packages here like Vale and Glow.
The packages specified here work to provide a rich, productive experience on the command-line. Namely, tmux and direnv are critical to my workflow. This module also specifies fzf and modern replacements for some common Unix commands: bat, exa, fd, and ripgrep.
Herein is specified the venerable Vim text editor and a simple configuration that I use to turn it into a more basic, lightweight alternative to Neovim for quick editing tasks.
Included in this repository is the source code for Grimoire, a command-line
interface I created for system management. I’ll let its help describe it
briefly:
A book of magic spells
Usage:
grim [command]
Available Commands:
completion Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
config Manage program configurations
help Help about any command
switch Switch to a new Nix system generation
theme Change user theme
Flags:
-h, --help help for grim
Use "grim [command] --help" for more information about a command.
To build Grimoire, first install Nix then run this command from the cli directory:
nix shell nixpkgs#go -c make
Alternatively, if you have Go installed, you can simply make.
Home Manager has the capability to configure some of the programs that I use, but for those not supported and for anything but the simplest configurations I prefer to maintain a classic dotfiles setup. Programs configured this way include:
- tmux, a terminal multiplexer
- Aerospace, a tiling window manager for macOS
- Emacs, a text editor and Lisp application environment
- Karabiner-Elements, a keyboard customizer for macOS
- kitty, a feature-rich GPU-based terminal emulator
- Lazygit, a terminal UI for Git
- Neovim, my primary text editor and software development tool
- skhd, a simple hotkey daemon for macOS
- yazi, a terminal file manager
- zellij, a terminal workspace
These configs can be installed with Grimoire: grim config link.
Install Nix:
$ sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install)
Install Homebrew:
$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Clone this repository:
$ sudo git clone https://github.com/ngscheurich/system.git /etc/system
$ sudo chown -R $(whoami):staff /etc/system
Set the hostname:
$ sudo scutil --set HostName [HOSTNAME]
Build the system:
$ nix build /etc/system/#darwinConfigurations.[HOSTNAME].system --out-link /tmp/nix-build
Switch to the new system generation:
$ /tmp/nix-build/sw/bin/darwin-rebuild switch --flake /etc/system#[HOSTNAME]
Log out and back in for all changes to take effect.