trnck.dev
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_posts/2025-02-01-nix.md
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I discovered Nix quite a while ago: I remember it was in 2022 when I saw [@ghuntley](https://ghuntley.com/) praise it publicly and at the time, I didn't pay too much attention to it or to what it even was, since I was scared of bringing more complexity into my already hacky and complicated setups, in which I juggled between using Windows and my new MacBook, which I was still getting accustomed to (as one does being a lifelong victim of Microsoft's OS dominance over the PC market).
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2022 was also the year dotfiles became a first-class citizen in Gitpod and I wanted to try it out so bad: I had so many ideas what to do with them ranging from funny [login messages](https://blog.trnck.dev/terminal-tricks/#:~:text=install%20powershell%2Dcore-,2)%20WSL%202,-You%20can%20have) through setting up [gpg commit signing](https://github.com/gitpod-io/gitpod/issues/666). Unfortunately, none of my original intentions with dotfiles went through: in the end, I was just frustrated that I couldn't easily debug my setup and gave up (also since they weren't crucial for my day-to-day anyway).
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2022 was also the year dotfiles became a first-class citizen in Gitpod and I wanted to try it out so bad: I had so many ideas what to do with them ranging from funny [login messages](/terminal-tricks) through setting up [gpg commit signing](https://github.com/gitpod-io/gitpod/issues/666). Unfortunately, none of my original intentions with dotfiles went through: in the end, I was just frustrated that I couldn't easily debug my setup and gave up (also since they weren't crucial for my day-to-day anyway).
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Fast forward to last October, when I saw nix mentioned again in a video in my YouTube recommended. All of a sudden, the whole appeal of Nix clicked: I love my local macOS setup, but I've always feared messing something up and not being able to revert it, like I'm used to with all my other work. Now, after watching [that amazing video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8BL8mdzWHI) I had to at least give it a shot: after not even an hour, I had a working `nix-darwin` setup with all my homebrew casks and brews migrated to a single nix flake, which I was able to manage all from with my text editor - wow! No more `brew install`s and `uninstall`s, just change a text file, run a command, and this magic little fairy called Nix will take care of the entire reconciliation for me.
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