Install Packages

There's two ways to install packages using home-manager.

• home.packages: for any package exists in a channel.
• programs.<pkg_name>: for build in options for certain package by home-manager.

Install from a channel

home.packages provides a explicit way to include what package should be installed. pkgs here is a channel unpacked from theflake.nix.

{ config, pkgs, ... }: {
  home.packages = with pkgs; [
    git     # package names came from channel
    neovim
    ripgrep
    openssh
    lazygit
  ];
}

NOTE

pkgs is the unique attribute in the function of home.nix, it should be always available.

TIP

How do I know the package name? Search on NixOS Search to find the package you want.

Install by builtin option

For some packages, home-manager provides builtin options to set them up. It seems pkgs is not involved, actually it was used by default for programs.<pkg_name>. So we should always make sure pkgs exists as a parameter for the function in home.nix, should be discussed later.

{ config, pkgs, ... }: {
  programs.git.enable = true;
}

enable implies that the package will be installed implicitly.

Use another channel

Home-manager options also provides a package attribute for not using default pkgs.

programs.git = {
    enable = true;
    package = unstable.git;
};

NOTE

unstable here should be another channel imported as one of the attribute of the function parameter. We'll discuss how to use multiple channels in later chapter.

INFO

Only few packages has builtin options, how do I know what attribute I can set? Check out Home-manager Options and search programs.<pkg_name>