Configuring Beets using Nix

[johnhamelink]

Hi there,

I thought I'd show an example of how to build out a configuration for Beets using Nix. While, yes, it is more time consuming to setup things this way, I personally like how portable nix configurations are, and I like being able to reduce the variety of configuration formats/syntaxes across my configuration.

If you want to use a third party beets plugin that isn't in nixpkgs yet, the trick is to build it and then include it in the beets package, so that it is in scope:

let  beets-plugin-check = pkgs.callPackage ./beets-plugin-check.nix {
    inherit lib;
    inherit (pkgs) fetchPypi python3Packages;
    beets = pkgs.beetsPackages.beets-minimal;
  };
in (pkgs.beets.override {
      pluginOverrides = {
        check = {
          enable = true;
          propagatedBuildInputs = [ beets-plugin-check ];
        };
      };
    })

Home-manager's options contains programs.beets, which makes it easy to add config in nix syntax, and for that config to be compiled down into
YAML for beets to consume.

I don't claim to be an expert with Nix, but this is how I got it to work for me. Suggestions and improvements are always welcome!

Here's my beets config in its entirety: https://git.sr.ht/~johnhamelink/nix/tree/9292f3554af50b642e6bb7ae57badd94312818ff/item/home/hosts/sun/beets