This repository is intended to be a sane, batteries-included starter template for running a JeezyVim-powered NixOS development environment on WSL.
If you don't want to dig into NixOS too much right now, the only file you need
to concern yourself with is home.nix. This is where you can add and
remove binaries to your global $PATH
.
Go to https://search.nixos.org to find the correct package names, though usually they will be what you expect them to be in other package managers.
unstable-packages
is for packages that you want to always keep at the latest
released versions, and stable-packages
is for packages that you want to track
with the current release of NixOS (currently 24.05).
If you want to update the versions of the available unstable-packages
, run
nix flake update
to pull the latest version of the Nixpkgs repository and
then apply the changes.
Make sure to look at all the FIXME
notices in the various files which are
intended to direct you to places where you may want to make configuration
tweaks.
If you found this starter template useful, please consider sponsoring and subscribing to my YouTube channel.
This starter is a lightly-opinionated take on a productive terminal-driven development environment based on my own preferences. However, it is trivial to customize to your liking both by removing and adding tools that you prefer.
- The default editor is JeezyVim
win32yank
is used to ensure perfect bi-directional copying and pasting to and from Windows GUI applications and LunarVim running in WSL- The default shell is
fish
- Native
docker
(ie. Linux, not Windows) is enabled by default - The prompt is Starship
fzf
,lsd
,zoxide
, andbroot
are integrated intofish
by default- These can all be disabled easily by setting
enable = false
in home.nix, or just removing the lines all together
- These can all be disabled easily by setting
direnv
is integrated intofish
by defaultgit
config is generated in home.nix with options provided to enable private HTTPS clones with secret tokensfish
config is generated in home.nix and includes git aliases, useful WSL aliases
There have been some recent changes in WSL2 that make running win32yank
within WSL2 very slow. You should install this on Windows by running scoop install win32yank
or compiling it from source, and then adding it to your $PATH
:
{
programs.fish = {
interactiveShellInit = ''
fish_add_path --append /mnt/c/Users/<Your Windows Username>/scoop/apps/win32yank/0.1.1
'';
};
}
- Get the latest release
- Install it (tweak the command to your desired paths):
wsl --import NixOS .\NixOS\ .\nixos-wsl.tar.gz --version 2
- Enter the distro:
wsl -d NixOS
- Get a copy of this repo (you'll probably want to fork it eventually):
git clone https://github.com/LGUG2Z/nixos-wsl-starter.git /tmp/configuration
cd /tmp/configuration
- Change the username to your desired username in
flake.nix
withnvim
(or whichever editor you prefer) - Install
win32yank
withscoop
and add it to your$PATH
in NixOS - Apply the configuration and shutdown the WSL2 VM
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake /tmp/configuration && sudo shutdown -h now
- Reconnect to the WSL2 VM
wsl -d NixOS
cd ~
and thenpwd
should now show/home/<YOUR_USERNAME>
- Move the configuration to your new home directory
mv /tmp/configuration ~/configuration
- Go through all the
FIXME:
notices in~/configuration
and make changes wherever you want - Apply the configuration
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake ~/configuration
Note: If developing in Rust, you'll still be managing your toolchains and
components like rust-analyzer
with rustup
!
In order to keep the template as approachable as possible for new NixOS users, this project uses a flat layout without any nesting or modularization.
flake.nix
is where dependencies are specifiednixpkgs
is the current release of NixOSnixpkgs-unstable
is the current trunk branch of NixOS (ie. all the latest packages)home-manager
is used to manage everything related to your home directory (dotfiles etc.)nur
is the community-maintained Nix User Repositories for packages that may not be available in the NixOS repositorynixos-wsl
exposes important WSL-specific configuration optionsnix-index-database
tells you how to install a package when you run a command which requires a binary not in the$PATH
wsl.nix
is where the VM is configured- The hostname is set here
- The default shell is set here
- User groups are set here
- WSL configuration options are set here
- NixOS options are set here
home.nix
is where packages, dotfiles, terminal tools, environment variables and aliases are configured