A convenient converter of dconf files to Nix, as expected by Home Manager's dconf settings. So you can Nixify your GNOME Shell configuration 😉
- Benchmarks
- Introduction
- Run
- Supported types
- GNOME Shell configuration
- Installation
- Troubleshooting
- Development
Take it with a grain of salt but on my machine it takes an average of 7.1ms to process a 349 lines configuration and generate a Nix file with 433 lines.
Given the following dconf
settings:
[org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/mouse]
natural-scroll=false
speed=-0.5
[org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/touchpad]
tap-to-click=false
two-finger-scrolling-enabled=true
[org/gnome/desktop/input-sources]
current=uint32 0
sources=[('xkb', 'us')]
xkb-options=['terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp', 'lv3:ralt_switch', 'caps:ctrl_modifier']
[org/gnome/desktop/screensaver]
picture-uri='file:///home/gvolpe/Pictures/nixos.png'
You will get the following output when running dconf2nix
:
{ lib, ... }:
with lib.hm.gvariant;
{
dconf.settings = {
"org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/mouse" = {
natural-scroll = false;
speed = -0.5;
};
"org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/touchpad" = {
tap-to-click = false;
two-finger-scrolling-enabled = true;
};
"org/gnome/desktop/input-sources" = {
current = mkUint32 0;
sources = [ (mkTuple [ "xkb" "us" ]) ];
xkb-options = [ "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" "lv3:ralt_switch" "caps:ctrl_modifier" ];
};
"org/gnome/desktop/screensaver" = {
picture-uri = "file:///home/gvolpe/Pictures/nixos.png";
};
};
}
It makes use of the Home Manager's dconf.settings key.
You can make changes in the UI and create a dump of your dconf
file at any time, which you can Nixify so Home Manager can restore the next time you run home-manager switch
. To create a dump, run the following command:
dconf dump / > dconf.settings
The easiest way is to pipe the standard input to dconf2nix
and expect the result in the standard output:
dconf dump / | dconf2nix > dconf.nix
If you have an input file instead, you can run the following command:
dconf2nix -i data/dconf.settings -o output/dconf.nix
Type --help
for some more information.
dconf2nix - Nixify dconf configuration files
Usage: dconf2nix [-v|--version] [-r|--root ARG] [--verbose]
[(-i|--input ARG) (-o|--output ARG)]
Convert a dconf file into a Nix file, as expected by Home Manager.
Available options:
-h,--help Show this help text
-v,--version Show the current version
-r,--root ARG Custom root path. e.g.: system/locale/
--verbose Verbose mode (debug)
-i,--input ARG Path to the dconf file (input)
-o,--output ARG Path to the Nix output file (to be created)
By default, dconf2nix
expects the root to be /
. If you want to create a dump of a custom root, you can use the --root
flag. For example:
dconf dump /system/locale/ | dconf2nix --root system/locale > dconf.nix
This will generate an output similar to the one below.
{
dconf.settings = {
"system/locale" = {
region = "en_US.UTF-8";
};
};
}
With some minor spots (e.g. hexadecimal floats), the complete GVariant text format is supported. But because Nix and GVariant data models are quite different, the Nix format can be a bit verbose, relying on constructor functions.
Once you have your dconf.nix
, you can import it via Home Manager.
{
programs.home-manager.enable = true;
imports = [
./dconf.nix
];
}
If you are using the Home Manager module for NixOS you can import it like so:
{
home-manager.users.joe = { pkgs, ... }: {
imports = [ ./dconf.nix ];
# ...
};
}
dconf2nix
is available in Nixpkgs and can be installed as any other package. It can also be used without installing. For example, with flakes.
$ nix run nixpkgs#dconf2nix -- --version
<<< DCONF2NIX >>>
Version: 0.0.12
Maintainers: Nix Community
Source code: https://github.com/nix-commmunity/dconf2nix
To build it from source, it is recommend to use Cachix to reduce the compilation time.
Have a look at the latest releases for more information.
Do consider the caveats mentioned above in the Supported Types section.
To compile and run the tests locally.
cabal new-configure
cabal new-run dconf2nix-tests
To generate the static binary.
cabal new-configure --disable-executable-dynamic --ghc-option=-optl=-static --ghc-option=-optl=-pthread
nix-build
If everything goes well, the binary should be under result/bin/
.