a95337eefd
When home-manager manages the Firefox configuration, the `profiles.ini` file in `~/.mozilla/firefox/` is immutable. Any attempt by Firefox to update it fails accordingly. Currently, when multiple profiles are defined, it is not possible to choose a non-default one by passing a `-Profile` option to Firefox, or by using `firefox -ProfileManager`: if the user chooses a non-default profile, Firefox tries to update the `profile.ini` with this choice, which fails because of the file's immutability, and Firefox refuses to start up. The user is shown an error saying `An unexpected error has prevented your changes from being saved.`. Currently, the setting to save the profile choice back to `profiles.ini` is hardcoded in home-manager. This Pull Request changes that, so the file is never updated with the user choice. This fixes the cases where a user attempts to start a non-default profile. I think this is also matches home-manager philosophy nicely: because we define what the default profile is in our home-manager config, the user should not be able to change that in the firefox gui, because then the active configuration would diverge from what's defined in home-manager. As a matter of fact, the user currently can't change the default anyway, as trying to do so results in an error, but the user should be able to choose a profile for an individual Firefox instance. The Firefox Profile Manager GUI (that you get by starting Firefox with the `-ProfileManager` option) has a check box to decide whether to "use the selected profile without asking at startup", i.e. make it the new default. This is currently ticked (because it's hardcoded in home-manager as `StartWithLastProfile = 1`). If it stays ticked, choosing any profile other than the default results in the error. Unticking this box will also not help, because now Firefox would attempt to update `profiles.ini` with `StartWithLastProfile=0`. Either way, when home-manager manages the Firefox config for us, we cannot have Firefox update `profiles.ini`, and therefore we cannot change the default profile through Firefox's GUI. With this fix, choosing a different profile on the command line (`firefox -Profile foo`) or via the GUI (`firefox -ProfileManager`) now works. The user will still get an error when they tick the checkbox to "use the selected profile without asking at startup", because that results in an attempt to update `profiles.ini`. Also, it would mean that the chosen default profile would diverge from the setting in the user's home-manager config - so not allowing this seems sensible. |
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| default.nix | ||
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| README.md | ||
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| xgettext | ||
Home Manager using Nix
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.
Usage
Before attempting to use Home Manager please read the warning below.
For a systematic overview of Home Manager and its available options, please see:
If you would like to contribute to Home Manager, then please have a look at "Contributing" in the manual.
Releases
Home Manager is developed against nixpkgs-unstable branch, which often causes
it to contain tweaks for changes/packages not yet released in stable NixOS.
To avoid breaking users' configurations, Home Manager is released in branches
corresponding to NixOS releases (e.g. release-24.11). These branches get
fixes, but usually not new modules. If you need a module to be backported, then
feel free to open an issue.
Words of warning
Unfortunately, it is quite possible to get difficult to understand errors when working with Home Manager. You should therefore be comfortable using the Nix language and the various tools in the Nix ecosystem.
If you are not very familiar with Nix but still want to use Home Manager then you are strongly encouraged to start with a small and very simple configuration and gradually make it more elaborate as you learn.
In some cases Home Manager cannot detect whether it will overwrite a previous manual configuration. For example, the Gnome Terminal module will write to your dconf store and cannot tell whether a configuration that it is about to be overwritten was from a previous Home Manager generation or from manual configuration.
Home Manager targets NixOS unstable and NixOS version 24.11 (the current stable version), it may or may not work on other Linux distributions and NixOS versions.
Also, the home-manager tool does not explicitly support rollbacks at the
moment so if your home directory gets messed up you'll have to fix it yourself.
See the rollbacks section for instructions on how to manually perform a
rollback.
Now when your expectations have been built up and you are eager to try all this out you can go ahead and read the rest of this text.
Contact
You can chat with us on IRC in the channel #home-manager on OFTC. There is also a Matrix room, which is bridged to the IRC channel.
Installation
Home Manager can be used in three primary ways:
-
Using the standalone
home-managertool. For platforms other than NixOS and Darwin, this is the only available choice. It is also recommended for people on NixOS or Darwin that want to manage their home directory independently of the system as a whole. See "Standalone installation" in the manual for instructions on how to perform this installation. -
As a module within a NixOS system configuration. This allows the user profiles to be built together with the system when running
nixos-rebuild. See "NixOS module" in the manual for a description of this setup. -
As a module within a nix-darwin system configuration. This allows the user profiles to be built together with the system when running
darwin-rebuild. See "nix-darwin module" in the manual for a description of this setup.
Home Manager provides both the channel-based setup and the flake-based one. See Nix Flakes for a description of the flake-based setup.
Translations
Home Manager has basic support for internationalization through gettext. The translations are hosted by Weblate. If you would like to contribute to the translation effort then start by going to the Home Manager Weblate project.
License
This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.