Nix on nobe4

Devenv as a Config Syncer

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:34:25 +0200

I keep a golangci-lint config that I share across my Go projects. Sync’ing it around gets old fast: I have to remember which repos use it and update them all.

Devenv already manages my dev shells. Turns out it can also fetch and install config files automatically.

The idea

pkgs.fetchurl downloads a file at build time and pins it by hash. Devenv tasks can run before the shell starts.

Combine the two: fetch a remote config, symlink it into the project.

Nix RPi Bootstrapping

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I can never remember how to set up a Raspberry Pi. Every time I flash an SD card, I end up searching for the same wifi configuration, the same SSH setup, the same boot options.

During my recent exploration of Nix, this felt like an immediate candidate for improvement: the whole configuration lives in code, and rebuilding is one command.

This post covers getting NixOS onto an RPi from scratch, and the problems I hit while deploying updates to it. It is simplified for clarity and covers three areas: building a minimal bootstrap image, handling secrets with agenix, and deploying updates over SSH.

Nix bin alias

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In one of my previous post, I explored how to use ln to link files across a NixOS system. The two initial needs were to link configuration files, and create a binary alias.

I tend to install gojq and use it as jq, it makes more sense to me to have a consistent experience between the CLI and library. I have not yet suffered from this choice, despite my intense jq usage.

In this post, we’ll use it to explore how to create a direct link to the gojq binary. The logic can be applied to any other binary of your choice.

Nix-Darwin shell override

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

All code snippets are simplified for clarity.

Moving aliases to Nix

I recently decided to move my shell aliases, and ZSH options to Nix.

There are predefined Nix options for this, all under programs.zsh and programs.bash.

And since I use the same aliases for zsh and bash, here’s the configuration I came to:

packages/shell/aliases.nix

{ lib, pkgs, ... }:
{
 "ls" = "ls --color=auto";
 "ll" = "ls -la";
}
// lib.optionalAttrs pkgs.stdenv.isDarwin {
 "kitty" = "$HOME/Applications/kitty.app/Contents/MacOS/kitty";
}

packages/shell/shell.nix

{ lib, pkgs, ... }:
let
 shellAliases = import ./aliases.nix { lib = lib; pkgs = pkgs; };
in
{
 programs.zsh = {
 enable = true;
 setOptions = [ "ALWAYS_TO_END" ];
 shellAliases = shellAliases;
 };

 programs.bash = {
 enable = true;
 shellAliases = shellAliases;
 };
}

And I can import shell.nix wherever needed, so far so good.

Nix ln, the wrong ways

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR: don’t do this, everyone suggests using home-manager, or a non-Nix solution.

In the exploration of porting my configuration to Nix, the next step was to manage all the links. This article shows a couple of wrong ways to do it, they are still good learning paths, hence this writing.

Unless otherwise specified, all code examples are simplified for clarity.

Current configuration

Whenever I need to link a new file, I add a line in:

Nix packaging

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have been using Nix for a couple of month, from a purely consumer perspective. In all tools that I wanted to master, producing is a great teaching tool, sometimes more than consuming.

In that effect, I wanted to see how I could install bat, without using the predefined package.

The plan

Download the source code

This is achieved with fetchFromGitHub.
Compile the rust binary

This is achieved with buildRustPackage.