Me, too, and also I already have a bunch of brew packages which I know are well maintained. So, switch to using both? Uninstall brew packages and install nix versions, verifying they are all maintained over there?

Sorry, no.

Nix Darwin supports brew, so this isn't really a reasonable argument.

> So, switch to using both?

This is an option, yes. Plus, it has the added benefit of you not needing to manage `brew doctor`, `brew cleanup`, etc. yourself. So you're not stuck with weird packages you installed once, never needed again, and forgot to clean up.

It's strange that people are so against declarative systems, or even file-based OS configuration. When I get my new Macbook I was up-and-running within a few minutes. I can't imagine maintaining a list of brews I need to re-install just to set up everything + my configs + everything else. Nix Darwin just made this so ridiculously easy.

Plus I can share almost all of my configuration with my Linux setups so I have a near-consistent environment whether I'm on Mac or Linux.

The overhead of remembering the names for Brew, Apt, Snap, or whatever package managers exist seems like a lot of overhead, and I just value declarative, reproducible systems. Managing my packages on the fly?

Sorry, no.

> It's strange that people are so against declarative systems, or even file-based OS configuration. When I get my new Macbook I was up-and-running within a few minutes. I can't imagine maintaining a list of brews I need to re-install just to set up everything + my configs + everything else.

I haven’t had time to try Nix yet, but HomeBrew does have a declarative-ish workflow that I’ve been using for years:

Brew Bundle [1] lets you have a plaintext file listing all packages you want installed on your system. Add a line for stuff you want installed, delete a line for stuff you want removed, invoke it the right way and it will install/remove packages until your system matches the list. The initial list can be generated by “brew bundle dump” or something like that.

For configuration, I find that a normal dotfile repo cloned into my ~/.config (with a script that maintains symlinks to config files in e.g. ~/Library) works well enough for my use.

[1]: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle