Release Notes

The programs.broot.verbs option is now a list rather than an attribute set. To migrate, move the keys of the attrset into the list items' invocation keys. For example,

programs.broot.verbs = {
  "p" = { execution = ":parent"; };
};

becomes

programs.broot.verbs = [
  {
    invocation = "p";
    execution = ":parent";
  }
];

The options home.homeDirectory and home.username no longer have default values and must therefore be provided in your configuration. Previously their values would default to the content of the environment variables HOME and USER, respectively.

Further, the options xdg.cacheHome, xdg.configHome, and xdg.dataHome will no longer be affected by the XDG_CACHE_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME, and XDG_DATA_HOME environment variables. They now unconditionally default to

If you choose to switch to state version 20.09 then you must set these options if you use non-default XDG base directory paths.

The initial configuration generated by

$ nix-shell '<home-manager>' -A install

will automatically include these options, when necessary.

The nixpkgs module no longer references <nixpkgs>. Before it would do so when building the pkgs module argument. Starting with state version 20.09, the pkgs argument is instead built from the same Nixpkgs that was used to initialize the Home Manager modules. This is useful, for example, when using Home Manager within a Nix Flake. If you want to keep using <nixpkgs> with state version ≥ 20.09 then add

_module.args.pkgsPath = <nixpkgs>;

to your Home Manager configuration.

The options wayland.windowManager.sway.config.bars and opt-xsession.windowManager.i3.config.bars have been changed so that most of the suboptions are now nullable and default to null. The default for these two options has been changed to manually set the old defaults for each suboption. The overall effect is that if the bars options is not set, then the default remains the same. On the other hand, something like:

bars = [ {
  command = "waybar";
} ];

will now create the config:

bar {
  swaybar_command waybar
}

instead of

bar {

  font pango:monospace 8
  mode dock
  hidden_state hide
  position bottom
  status_command /nix/store/h7s6i9q1z5fxrlyyw5ls8vqxhf5bcs5a-i3status-2.13/bin/i3status
  swaybar_command waybar
  workspace_buttons yes
  strip_workspace_numbers no
  tray_output primary
  colors {
    background #000000
    statusline #ffffff
    separator #666666
    focused_workspace #4c7899 #285577 #ffffff
    active_workspace #333333 #5f676a #ffffff
    inactive_workspace #333333 #222222 #888888
    urgent_workspace #2f343a #900000 #ffffff
    binding_mode #2f343a #900000 #ffffff
  }

}

Assigning a list to the home.file, xdg.configFile, and xdg.dataFile options is now deprecated and will produce a warning message if used. Specifically, if your configuration currently contains something like

home.file = [
  {
    target = ".config/foo.txt";
    text = "bar";
  }
]

then it should be updated to instead use the equivalent attribute set form

home.file = {
  ".config/foo.txt".text = "bar";
}

Support for the list form will be removed in Home Manager version 20.09.

The lib function attribute given to modules is now enriched with an attribute hm containing extra library functions specific for Home Manager. More specifically, lib.hm is now the same as config.lib and should be the preferred choice since it is more robust.

Therefore, if your configuration makes use of, for example, config.lib.dag to create activation script blocks, it is recommended to change to lib.hm.dag.

Note, in the unlikely case that you are

then you must update your configuration to perform the option assignment inside a config attribute. For example, instead of

home-manager.users.jane = { config = "foo"; };

use

home-manager.users.jane = { config.config = "foo"; };

The list form of the programs.ssh.matchBlocks option has been deprecated and configurations requiring match blocks in a defined order should switch to using DAG entries instead. For example, a configuration

programs.ssh.matchBlocks = [
  {
    host = "alpha.foo.com";
    user = "jd";
  }
  {
    host = "*.foo.com";
    user = "john.doe";
  }
];

can be expressed along the lines of

programs.ssh.matchBlocks = {
  "*.example.com" = {
    user = "john.doe";
  }
  "alpha.example.com" = lib.hm.dag.entryBefore ["*.example.com"] {
    user = "jd";
  }
};

Support for the list form will be removed in Home Manager version 20.09.

The home.file.<name>.source option now allows source files to be hidden, that is, having a name starting with the . character. It also allows the source file name to contain characters not typically allowed for Nix store paths. For example, your configuration can now contain things such as

home.file."my file".source = ./. + "/file with spaces!";

The type used for the systemd unit options under systemd.user.services, systemd.user.sockets, etc. has been changed to offer more robust merging of configurations. If you don’t override values within systemd units then you are not affected by this change. Unfortunately, if you do override unit values you may encounter errors.

In particular, if you get an error saying that a “unique option” is “defined multiple times” then you need to use the mkForce function. For example,

systemd.user.services.foo.Service.ExecStart = "/foo/bar";

becomes

systemd.user.services.foo.Service.ExecStart = lib.mkForce "/foo/bar";

We had to make this change because the old merging was causing too many confusing situations for people.