Migration

Migrating to Minimal Profiles

Why

The full base.nix profile pulls in ~100+ packages including LLM tools, media tools, and VCS clients. For machines that only need essentials, the minimal profiles reduce closure size and build time.

Before (full profile)

## modules/hosts/<machine>/default.nix
extraModules = [
  ../../hjem/profiles/base.nix
  ../../hjem/profiles/development.nix
  # ...
];

base.nix imports: core tools, search tools, terminal packages, shells, direnv, zellij, yt-dlp.

After (minimal profile)

extraModules = [
  ../../hjem/profiles/minimal-darwin.nix  # Darwin only
  # or ../../hjem/profiles/base.nix with fewer app imports on NixOS
  # Add only what you need:
  # ../../hjem/profiles/development.nix
  # ../../hjem/profiles/darwin.nix
];

minimal-darwin.nix includes: bash, fish, nushell, direnv, ripgrep, fd, jq, htop, curl, wget, git, neovim, fzf.

What you lose

Switching from base.nix to minimal-darwin.nix removes:

Category	Packages removed
Search	bat, eza, television
Terminal core	lla, rclone, croc, dufs, p7zip, ouch, sd, tokei, moreutils, fx, xan, glow, killall, dust, duf, zenith, fastfetch, w3m, doggo, gnupg, ffuf, mosh, gping, nmap, hub, gitu, jjui, lazyjj, chafa, mediainfo, asciinema, vhs, streamlink, lolcat, gnumake, pueue, wishlist
Terminal LLM	gemini-cli, openskills, pi, rtk, agent-browser, aichat, mods, qemu, google-cloud-sdk, mcp-proxy, wakatime-cli
Apps	zellij, yt-dlp, btop, tmux*, zstd

*tmux is in base.nix but not minimal-darwin.nix

Migration steps

1. Create a test branch: git checkout -b test/minimal-<machine>
2. Change the profile import in modules/hosts/<machine>/default.nix
3. Build without deploying: nix build .#darwinConfigurations.<machine>.system or nix eval .#nixosConfigurations.<machine>.config.system.build.toplevel.drvPath --no-write-lock-file
4. Test deploy: clan machines deploy <machine>
5. Verify essentials work: shells, git, direnv, basic tools
6. Add back profiles you need (development.nix, hyprland.nix, darwin.nix)

Adding a New Machine to Existing Clan

See New Machine Setup Guide for complete instructions.

Migrating Services to Tag-Based Deployment

Currently most services use explicit machines.vanessa = { ... }. To migrate to tag-based:

## Before
roles.default.machines.vanessa = { settings = { ... }; };

## After — deploys to all machines tagged "server"
roles.default.tags = [ "server" ];
roles.default.settings = { ... };

Caveats:

• Per-machine settings (like specific ports or paths) can’t be defined via tag-level settings
• Only migrate services where all target machines should have identical configuration
• Test with nix flake check --no-build after changes