Using the ni Command with home-manager

##Introduction

I got a bit stuck trying to use the ni command with home-manager, so I’m writing down the fix.

##TL;DR

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{ pkgs, ... }:
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{
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  home.packages = with pkgs; [
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    nodePackages."@antfu/ni"
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  ];
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}

##What is ni?

ni is one of the command wrappers for managing JavaScript packages such as npm, yarn, pnpm, and bun. Each command has different subcommands and options, so you usually need to learn each command separately. ni provides a unified set of commands for them.

For example, npm install, yarn, pnpm install, and bun install can all be run as ni. It also supports npm install, npm install xxx, npm ci, npm run, npx, npm upgrade, npm uninstall, and more.

##Using ni with home-manager

If you want to manage it with home-manager, you might think adding ni to home.packages is enough, but the following does not install the ni command.

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{ pkgs, ... }:
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{
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  home.packages = with pkgs; [
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    ni
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  ];
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}

As you can see by searching NixOS Search, ni is not registered.

However, you can see in the GitHub repo that it is available in nodePackages. Since the package name is @antfu/ni, you might try the following, but it does not work.

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{ pkgs, ... }:
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{
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  home.packages = with nodePackages; [
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    @antfu/ni
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  ];
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}

I’m not sure about the exact syntax rules, but variables starting with @ are not allowed. If you write @antfu/ni as a string, i.e. "@antfu/ni", it is treated as a string and still does not work.

In the end, I was able to install the ni command by writing it like this without with nodePackages;.

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{ pkgs, ... }:
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{
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  home.packages = with pkgs; [
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    nodePackages."@antfu/ni"
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  ];
7
}

##Conflict with nushell

Just when I thought that solved it, another issue popped up. The nu command (equivalent to npm upgrade) conflicts with nushell. I don’t use nushell regularly, so I avoided the conflict by not installing nushell.

Another command, nlx (equivalent to npx), used to be nix, but it was renamed because it conflicted with the Nix command (see the issue).

If nushell becomes more popular, the nu command may be renamed as well. Even if the names get a bit longer, I wish they used names like ni add and ni run instead of single-letter variants like ni, nu, and nr...