Neovim Flake

Neovim in nix.

Try it out:

$ nix run github:konradmalik/neovim-flake

Run checks (stylua, luacheck, typecheck via lua-language-server):

$ make check-fmt
$ make check-lint

Run tests (busted using nvim as an interpreter):

$ make test

Assumptions

• keeps all Neovim config in lua as it's supposed to be
• uses nix for system dependencies, plugins and packaging

That way nix is a layer on top, just used for packaging and reproducibility. It does not interfere with the standard way to configure Neovim.

Language servers, formatters, linters

Those are managed by nix and appended to the end of PATH for Neovim. This allows Neovim to use them, but also to use other versions by prepending them to PATH.

An example - you can have some project which uses an older version of black which formats files a bit differently. Assuming that this project has a devshell defined, you can just enter that devshell and run Neovim. The older black from the devshell will take precedence over the one provided by this flake, because devshell works by prepending to PATH.

Home Manager

There is a home-manager module provided with some additional options and QOL improvements.

Self-contained mode

When running/using neovim-pde from the flake directly it runs in self-contained mode.

This means that it appends its config in nix store to your $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and use -u flag to force-load this specific init.lua. This means that any init.lua in your local $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/$NVIM_APPNAME won't be loaded, even if $NVIM_APPNAME is neovim-pde (I think that after folders and others that don't need to be required explicitly will be loaded, so those should work if put to the proper $NVIM_APPNAME folder, but I've never tested this).

That also means that exrc functionality won't work (e.g. local .nvim.lua files won't be loaded automatically). If you rely on that feature (I sometimes do) then consider using the provided home-manager module.

Experimentation

One of the cons of using Neovim in nix is - no "dirty" modifications to Neovim to try something out quickly. Experimentation becomes harder. You always need to rebuild it, but nix build and then ./result/bin/nvim is quick and easy enough for it to not be a deal-breaker.

Another solution implemented in this repo is nvim-dev command that becomes available inside devShell here. It runs the neovim package defined in the repo with plugins and nix-generated lua files provided, but the native lua config gets read "live" from ./config/nvim here in the repo. This allows for instant feedback and dynamic development just like when using neovim without nix.

Note that nvim-dev uses -u flag, which means that exrc functionality won't work (e.g. local .nvim.lua files won't be loaded automatically).

Credits

Inspired by:

• https://primamateria.github.io/blog/neovim-nix/
• https://github.com/nix-community/kickstart-nix.nvim/