home-manager-brew

This nix flake contains a home-manager module that allows you to install and manage homebrew packages (formulae, cask, taps, mas, ...) with home-manager.

The goal is to extends nix and home-manager configuration. Some applications are not yet available for nix but those are already on brew, or if you have custom/private taps and you would still be able to set them up with home-manager.

The module will automatically install homebrew and aims to provide a bridge between Brew Budlefile and nix's reproducible setup, with configuration as code.

If you are already using nix-darwin, consider using the homebrew options instead. This module is designed to work on macOS and GNU/Linux, with a standalone home-manager installation and without nix-darwin setup.

Features

• Automatic install of Homebrew if not present
• Set up PATH and env variables for bash, zsh and fish shells
• Install formulae / brew packages, cask and application from the Mac App Store
• Support brew taps for custom repositories.
• Automatic brew update and upgrade

Install

In your flake.nix configuration add the following input:

inputs = {

  homebrew = {
    url = "github:koalalorenzo/home-manager-brew";
    inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
  };

};

Then update your config to load the nix module in your home-manager configuration:

outputs = {...} @ inputs: {

  packages.homeConfigurations."yourusername" = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
    # [...]
    modules = [
      # adds homebrew module
      inputs.homebrew.homeManagerModules.default
    ];
  };

};

Caution

If you have already packages installed please read carefully how to import existing packages. By default, home-manager will uninstall packages installed manually, unless they are specified as code in the nix configuration

Usage

You can add specific formulae / packages like this:

homebrew.formulae = [
  "cmatrix"
];

Taps

If you want to add taps you can do so like this:

homebrew.taps = [
  {
    name = "custom/tap";
    repo = "[email protected]:custom/homebrew-tap.git";
  }
];

Then you can install packages like you would with brew install:

homebrew.formulae = [
  "custom/tap/cmatrix"
];

Casks

Similarly to formulae you can specify casks to install:

homebrew.casks = [
  "vlc"
];

MAS (Mac App Store)

If you want to use the homebrew mas integration you can by specifying the name and the ID of the applications, like so:

homebrew.mas = [
  {
    name = "Meshtastic";
    id = 1586432531;
  }
  {
    name = "LanguageTool";
    id = 1534275760;
  }
]

You can obtain the ID of the application from the Mac App Store by using the mas command:

$ mas list
1586432531  Meshtastic            (2.7.6)
1534275760  LanguageTool          (8.21.1)

Importing from existing Brew setup

If you have an existing homebrew configuration, you can generate a brew bundle file to use to create the nix home-manager configuration. You can generate the brew bundle file with this command:

brew bundle dump --file=- --mas --cask --brew

The output of the command will show something similar to this:

brew "cmatrix"
cask "vlc"
mas "LanguageTool", id: 1534275760
mas "Meshtastic", id: 1586432531

By default if you don't import the existing bundle in the home-manager nix configuration, it will delete all the apps. This is to follow as close as possible the reproducible principle of Nix, and have full configuration as code. To prevent this, you can disable the cleanup:

  homebrew.cleanup = false;

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.