Trying out Windsurf IDE on NixOS ❄️

NixOS is currently my daily driver, but as of today I do not feel too confident about creating my own packages. I want to test Windsurf IDE so I decided to install it semi-correctly in terms of the nix philosophy. There does not seem to be a ready-made package yet.

What I did was:

• downloaded the Windsurf binary and extracted to my ~ directory.

• created a desktop entry using home-manager

  home.nix - partial
  {
      (...) # rest of the file
  
      ".local/share/applications/windsurf.desktop".text = ''
        [Desktop Entry]
        Type=Application
        Name=Windsurf
        Comment=VsCode based IDE
        Icon=/home/bart/Windsurf/resources/app/resources/linux/code.jpg
        Exec=/home/bart/Windsurf/windsurf
        Terminal=false
        Categories=Tools;Programming
      '';
  }

• added binary to the PATH variable

home.nix - partial
{
    (...) # rest of the file

	home.file = {
	 ".bashrc".text = ''
	  (...) # other .BASHRC stuff
	     
	  export PATH=/home/bart/Windsurf/bin:$PATH
	'';
}

This way the only step I need to do on a fresh OS is to download the binary, everything else rebuilds automatically with nixos-rebuild.

Once I understand the nix packaging more I might try to do it properly, but I imagine by then it will appear in the package repository thanks to people smarter than me. 🤓

— Nov 30, 2024