Configuring VSCode with Nix on macOS
Welcome back to the Nix on Mac series! By the end of this post, you’ll be able to fully configure VSCode through your Nix flake via home-manager, which we set up in part 2. This includes:
Nix won’t install non-free software like VSCode without you opting in. Add this line to your nix-darwin configuration module:
I’m sure many of you who are following along are using VSCode to edit your flake.nix file. I should note that installing VSCode through home-manager will likely blow away your existing settings when you call switch. Now would be a good time to back up your existing settings and extension list so you can replicate your setup from within Nix.
VSCode will be installed in /Users/$USER/Applications/Home Manager Apps/Notably, this isn’t inside the normal /Applications folder since home-manager can only install programs under your home directory. Even stranger, Spotlight can’t pick up our alias! We’ll come back and fix this at the end of the post. after running switch.
If you’ve previously installed VSCode, go ahead and dump the copy from /Applications in the trash. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads globally installed programs!
