plasma-manager/README.md

# Manage KDE Plasma with Home Manager

This project aims to provide [Home Manager][home-manager] modules which allow you
to configure KDE Plasma using Nix.

## Table of contents
- [Manage KDE Plasma with Home Manager](#manage-kde-plasma-with-home-manager)
- [Table of contents](#table-of-contents)
- [Supported versions](#supported-versions)
- [What's supported](#whats-supported)
- [What's not well supported (at the moment)](#whats-not-well-supported-at-the-moment)
- [What will not be supported](#what-will-not-be-supported)
- [Getting started](#getting-started)
- [Make your configuration more declarative with overrideConfig](#make-your-configuration-more-declarative-with-overrideconfig)
- [Capturing Your Current Configuration with rc2nix](#capturing-your-current-configuration-with-rc2nix)
- [Contributions and Maintenance](#contributions-and-maintenance)
- [Special Thanks](#special-thanks)

## Supported versions
`plasma-manager` supports both plasma 5 and plasma 6. The `trunk` branch is the
most up-to-date branch and is mainly focused on plasma 6, but may still work on
plasma 5. If you are running plasma 5, it's recommended to use the `plasma-5`
branch, which is designed to have better compatibility with plasma 5. To do this
with flakes you can use "github:nix-community/plasma-manager/plasma-5" as your
flake url, or if you are using nix-channels you can set the channel url to
"https://github.com/nix-community/plasma-manager/archive/plasma-5.tar.gz". It's
worth noting that the plasma 5 branch, due to the extra work required for
maintaining, may lag behind a bit in features, but in general it should be less
broken when used with plasma 5. If you want the best experience with
`plasma-manager` it's recommended running plasma 6.

## What's supported
At the moment `plasma-manager` supports configuring the following:
- KDE configuration files (via the `files` module)
- Global themes, colorschemes, icons, cursortheme, wallpaper (via the `workspace` module)
- Desktop icons, widgets, and mouse actions (via the `desktop` module)
- Configuration of spectacle shortcuts (via the `spectacle` module)
- Shortcuts (via the `shortcuts` module)
- Hotkeys (via the `hotkeys` module)
- Panels and Extra Widgets (via the `panels` module)
- Keyboards, Touchpads and Mice (via the `input` module)
- KRunner (via the `krunner` module)
- Screen locker (via the `kscreenlocker` module)
- Fonts (via the `fonts` module)
- Window Rules (via the `window-rules` module)
- KDE apps (via the `apps` module). In particular the following kde apps have
  modules in `plasma-manager`:
  - ghostwriter
  - kate
  - konsole
  - okular

Additionally there are more functionality than just listed above, and more
functionality to come in the future!

## What's not well supported (at the moment)
There also are some things which at the moment isn't very well supported, in
particular:
- Real-time updates of configuration without having to log out and back in
- Usage of high-level modules in the configuration generated by `rc2nix`
- Keybindings to some key combinations (`Ctrl+Alt+T` and `Print` for example, see https://github.com/nix-community/plasma-manager/issues/109 and https://github.com/nix-community/plasma-manager/issues/136)

There may also be more things we aren't aware of. If you find some other
limitations don't hesitate to open an issue or submit a pr.

## What will not be supported
There are some things which are out of bounds for this project due to technical
reasons. For example
- SDDM configuration (requires root-privileges and thus not suited for a `home-manager` module)

## Getting started
We provide some examples to help you get started. These are located in the
[examples](./examples/) directory. Here you in particular can find:
- [An example home-manager configuration](./examples/homeManager/home.nix) [with instructions](./examples/homeManager/README.md)
- [An example flake.nix for usage with home-manager only](./examples/homeManagerFlake//flake.nix)
- [An example flake.nix for usage with the system configuration](./examples/systemFlake/flake.nix)
- [An example home.nix showing some of the capabilities of plasma-manager](./examples/home.nix)

With more to come! These should give you some idea how to get started with
`plasma-manager`.

Additionally,
[the manual section containing all the supported plasma-manager options](https://nix-community.github.io/plasma-manager/options.xhtml)
may come in handy.

## Make your configuration more declarative with overrideConfig
By default `plasma-manager` will simply write the specified configurations to
various config-files and leave all other options alone. This way settings not
specified in `plasma-manager` will be left alone, meaning that configurations
made outside `plasma-manager` will still be set. This can lead to different
settings on different machines even with the same `plasma-manager`
configuration. If you like a declarative approach better consider enabling
`overrideConfig`. This makes it so all options not set by `plasma-manager` will
be set to the default on login. In practice this then becomes a declarative
setup, much like what you would expect from most `home-manager` options/modules.

One thing to keep in mind is that enabling this option will delete all the KDE
config-files on `home-manager` activation, and replace them with config-files
generated by `plasma-manager`. Therefore make sure you backup your KDE
config-files before enabling this option if you don't want to lose them.

## Capturing Your Current Configuration with rc2nix

To make it easier to migrate to `plasma-manager`, and to help maintain your Nix
configuration when not using `overrideConfig`, this project includes a tool
called `rc2nix`.

This tool will read KDE configuration files and translate them to Nix.  The
translated configuration is written to standard output.  This makes it easy to:

- Generate an initial Plasma Manager configuration file.
- See what settings are changed by a GUI tool by capturing a file
  before and after using the tool and then using `diff`.

Keep in mind that the `rc2nix` module isn't perfect and often will give somewhat
suboptimal configurations (it will in some cases prefer using the `files` module
when better configurations can be achieved using higher-level modules). However,
it is still a useful tool to quickly get your configuration up and running or
converting config-files generated by the gui settings app to nix expressions.

To run the `rc2nix` tool without having to clone this repository run
the following shell command:

```sh
nix run github:nix-community/plasma-manager
```

## Contributions and Maintenance

This is a community project and we welcome all contributions. KDE plasma and its
apps consists of a lot of configuration options, and if you find that some
options are missing and have the skills to implement this, PRs are very welcome.
Issues are also welcome for everything from feature-requests to bug-reports or
just general suggestions for improving the project.

## Special Thanks

`plasma-manager` started off it's development under
[pjones](https://github.com/pjones), whose contributions have laid the
foundation of the project to this day. The project was otherwise inspired by the
suggestions on [Home Manager Issue
#607][hm607] by people such as [bew](https://github.com/bew) and
[kurnevsky](https://github.com/kurnevsky). Thank you.

[home-manager]: https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager
[hm607]: https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/607
[nix-community]: https://github.com/nix-community