Import from a URL in Nix

I’m still a Nix beginner, and one thing I couldn’t figure out until recently was how to keep parts of my configuration.nix file under source control.

My goal 🔗︎

I’d like for my Nix configuration files to be modular and reusable, so depending on the system or flake, I can pull in only the configuration files I need. I’d like all my Nix configuration files to be under source control so that different systems can depend on different versions of any file so I don’t have to upgrade every system to the latest version of each configuration file at the same time.

Creating reusable bash aliases with a local file 🔗︎

One of the reusable Nix configurations I want is my bash aliases. On my existing system, I have these lines in my .bashrc:

alias gc='git commit --message'
alias gs='git status'
alias td='pushd $(mktemp -d)'

To achieve the equivalent in bash, I can create a file on my NixOS system with these contents. I’ve called it shell.nix but it can be anything:

{
  programs.bash.shellAliases = {
    gc = "git commit --message";
    gs = "git status";
    td = "pushd $(mktemp -d)";
  };
}

If I store this file under /tmp/shell.nix, then I can import it into my /etc/nixos/configuration.nix by adding the path to my imports:

{
  imports = [
    "/tmp/shell.nix"
  ];
}

If I run sudo nixos-rebuild switch and then restart my shell, I can see that my bash aliases are now active:

$ td
/tmp/tmp.awb7PW7aus ~

[/tmp/tmp.awb7PW7aus]$ pwd
/tmp/tmp.awb7PW7aus

Moving the Nix file to a URL 🔗︎

The solution above works, but it requires me to copy the same file on each of my Nix systems.

I’d rather host the file at a publicly accessible URL, and then I can have a standard configuration.nix file that references the URL.

Here’s how I adjust my configuration.nix to pull in my shell.nix file from a remote URL:

let
  shellAliases = builtins.fetchurl {
    url = "https://mtlynch.io/notes/nix-import-from-url/shell.nix";
  };
in {
  imports = [
    shellAliases
  ];
}

Once again, if I save these changes to configuration.nix, run sudo nixos-rebuild switch, and restart my shell, Nix imports my bash aliases from the URL.

Using fetchGit (optional) 🔗︎

Another option for fetching remote Nix files is to store them in a public Git repository and then use fetchGit to retrieve the files.

Here’s an example of a configuration.nix file that fetches my shell.nix from a public Github repo:

let
  repo = builtins.fetchGit {
    url = "https://github.com/mtlynch/nix-files";
    rev = "f98500a995cb5838e40be139a8327867faaff2d5";
  };
in {
  imports = [
    "${repo}/shell.nix"
  ];
}

The url is the public URL of my Github repo, and rev is the Git commit hash of the version of the file I want to import.

After I make those changes to configuration.nix, I can re-run sudo nixos-rebuild switch, and Nix imports my shell.nix file from my Github repo.

More advanced shell configuration 🔗︎

Most of my bash aliases are simple one-liners, but a few are more complicated. For those, I define bash functions, and then I create short bash aliases for those functions.

One example is my gcbm bash alias. I use it like this gcbm some-branch, which does the following:

1. Check out the main branch.
2. Pull down the latest changes from the remote repo.
3. Check out a new branch called some-branch.

I implement the heavy lifting for the alias in a bash function called git_sync_and_branch. Here’s how I implement that in my shell.nix:

{
  programs.bash = {
    shellInit = ''
      function git_sync_and_branch {
        local readonly TARGET_BRANCH="''$1"
        local readonly MAIN_BRANCH='master'

        git checkout "''${MAIN_BRANCH}" && \
          git pull origin "''${MAIN_BRANCH}" && \
          if [[ -n "''${TARGET_BRANCH}" ]]; then
            git checkout -b "''${TARGET_BRANCH}"
          fi
      }
      '';
    shellAliases = {
      gc = "git commit --message";
      gcbm = "git_sync_and_branch";
      gs = "git status";
      td = "pushd $(mktemp -d)";
    };
  };
}

Gotcha: Escaping dollar signs 🔗︎

One of the gotchas that caught me when trying to move my bash functions to Nix is that I need to escape the $ signs. Otherwise, Nix will try to interpolate them as local variables, but they’re bash variables, not Nix variables.

Here’s how I originally tried to write one of the lines in my git_sync_and_branch bash function:

git checkout "${MAIN_BRANCH}"

Nix failed with this error:

 error: undefined variable 'MAIN_BRANCH'

I need to escape the $ by prepending it with two single quotes ('') like this:

git checkout "''${MAIN_BRANCH}"

Why not Home Manager? 🔗︎

I think the more popular way to modularize your Nix configuration is with Home Manager.

But honestly, I still don’t understand the purpose of Home Manager. According to the project README:

This project provides a basic system for managing a user environment using the Nix package manager together with the Nix libraries found in Nixpkgs. It allows declarative configuration of user specific (non global) packages and dotfiles.

That confuses me because it sounds like what Nix already does.

I’ve peeked at Home Manager a few times, but every time, it feels like I have to invest a lot to learn this new tool for gains that aren’t clear to me.

Maybe I’ll eventually realize a benefit from managing my Nix configuration with Home Manager, but for now, I’ve found a fairly straightforward way to manage remote Nix files with standard Nix.