Recently I've been learning about Nix. At first my impression was not good: what it would provide that Docker can't? Then I went the other extreme: now I'm seeing its utility everywhere.
I have a dotfiles repository that I use to set up my environment. One part of it is my neovim config. Over the years I've been adding various stuff to it: plugins, keymaps, language servers, some custom configuration.
Even though the dotfiles should install everything, neovim is always broken at first and I need to fix it. This is because it uses a lot of different things:
- Vim plug installs the current version of plugins
- Mason installs the language servers
- Plugins need tools, such as Telescope needs ripgrep, gitsigns needs git
Nix's promise here is that I can have a binary that reliably contains everything that nvim needs. It manages plugins, language servers, compilers, and all the other tools plugins need.
I was a bit afraid to start working on it, as there are horror stories where people more familiar with Nix failed. But I had some free time in the past weeks and made the jump.
The result: I have a working nvim config and I'm already using it for my daily driver. Surprisingly, it turned out to be way easier than expected: all the plugins I use are available in the Nixpkgs.
With this, I can do a nix-build and then start with result/bin/nvim. I have it aliased in my shell so nvim will also work.
As an added benefit I could configure Landlock with it. By default it can only access the current directory, a few extra files, and no internet. That should limit the damage any of the various plugins and tools can do.
So far, I'm happy with this.
Originally published at advancedweb.hu
