Decision issue — not a commitment to adopt.
The fork. Peer repos (szaffarano/nix-dotfiles, alyraffauf/infra) manage user-level dotfiles as Nix via home-manager on their Nix hosts. We symlink raw dotfiles via the terminal_dotfiles / graphical_dotfiles Ansible roles.
Tradeoffs.
- home-manager: rollback, atomicity, dotfiles as part of the system generation on Nix hosts.
- raw-dotfiles-via-Ansible (current): editable-in-place, and portable to non-Nix hosts — a real advantage for the
terminal profile and any Debian/Ubuntu/macOS target.
Adopting home-manager would split dotfile management by host type (Nix vs. everything else), which cuts against the current single-source-of-truth model. Worth an explicit call rather than drifting into it during the flakes migration (#1).
Decision needed: adopt home-manager on Nix hosts / stay raw-dotfiles everywhere / hybrid. No code until decided.
Current lean (2026-07-23). Not willing to require Nix as a cross-system dependency — mac and ubuntu hosts already have native package managers, and the terminal/server fleet is meant to be safe on any unfamiliar box. So home-manager everywhere is out. Ceiling is a hybrid: home-manager on NixOS hosts only, Ansible symlinks for mac/ubuntu/servers. Remaining question is narrow — is even that Nix-vs-non-Nix split worth it, or stay uniform on Ansible? Leaning uniform-Ansible unless the flakes work (#1) makes home-manager on the NixOS boxes nearly free to add.
Decision issue — not a commitment to adopt.
The fork. Peer repos (
szaffarano/nix-dotfiles,alyraffauf/infra) manage user-level dotfiles as Nix viahome-manageron their Nix hosts. We symlink raw dotfiles via theterminal_dotfiles/graphical_dotfilesAnsible roles.Tradeoffs.
terminalprofile and any Debian/Ubuntu/macOS target.Adopting home-manager would split dotfile management by host type (Nix vs. everything else), which cuts against the current single-source-of-truth model. Worth an explicit call rather than drifting into it during the flakes migration (#1).
Decision needed: adopt home-manager on Nix hosts / stay raw-dotfiles everywhere / hybrid. No code until decided.
Current lean (2026-07-23). Not willing to require Nix as a cross-system dependency — mac and ubuntu hosts already have native package managers, and the
terminal/server fleet is meant to be safe on any unfamiliar box. So home-manager everywhere is out. Ceiling is a hybrid: home-manager on NixOS hosts only, Ansible symlinks for mac/ubuntu/servers. Remaining question is narrow — is even that Nix-vs-non-Nix split worth it, or stay uniform on Ansible? Leaning uniform-Ansible unless the flakes work (#1) makes home-manager on the NixOS boxes nearly free to add.