(this prolly deserves its own blog post somewhere)
The most useful setup pattern I can share for both nix-darwin and home-manager is to configure them to store their rc files next to the system files, and not overwrite them ...
This keeps darwin/hm from fully replacing your mac /etc/zsh* ~/.zsh* files on each update and also keeps os system updates from destroying your nix files ...
You instead add sourcing statements in your system/home files to bring in your nix files.
These sourcing statements are nuked after every OS upgrade so first time you login, nothing looks right in your shell.
For this, I keep a copy of both the system file before the nix sources and a copy of the file after the nix sources ... If the post-updated version of the system file matches the backup then I can simply replace with the backup of the versions with sources included ... If they don't match, then I have to review the file, manually add the sources, and create new backups ...
I'll also say that the system files haven't changed in a long time (zsh) so I can just copy my etc/zsh*-nix-backup files into place then restart my shell and be back to good ...
The most useful setup pattern I can share for both nix-darwin and home-manager is to configure them to store their rc files next to the system files, and not overwrite them ...
This keeps darwin/hm from fully replacing your mac /etc/zsh* ~/.zsh* files on each update and also keeps os system updates from destroying your nix files ...
You instead add sourcing statements in your system/home files to bring in your nix files.
These sourcing statements are nuked after every OS upgrade so first time you login, nothing looks right in your shell.
For this, I keep a copy of both the system file before the nix sources and a copy of the file after the nix sources ... If the post-updated version of the system file matches the backup then I can simply replace with the backup of the versions with sources included ... If they don't match, then I have to review the file, manually add the sources, and create new backups ...
I'll also say that the system files haven't changed in a long time (zsh) so I can just copy my etc/zsh*-nix-backup files into place then restart my shell and be back to good ...