Emacs 3rd party dependencies and user home integration can be well managed using Nix. Posimacs is a published example.

I've updated the example. It now uses nix flakes. The elisp files can be maintained as a dirty tree for happy hacking. Home manager is mainly used for the static aspects of user home integration rather than installing the elisp files read-only. I will be installing this on a Darwin machine sometime today.

The Scheme

• Straight for elisp packages & lockfiles
• Home manager for dotfiles
• Nix expressions for distributing 3rd party deps

Forewarning, the Emacs lisp is not marketed as good. At anything. My git tree is dirty. I mainly use the vterm integration and Rust Analyzer.

The Future

• Emacs can maintain its own nix profile to have a self-contained set of 3rd party dependencies like language servers and dynamic modules independently of the user environment
• Emacs can generate a home manager module for programs like vterm that want home integration
• Emacs can maintain non-package elisp configuration expressions without resorting to rigid git managed structures or rapidly decaying patchworks lifted from literate org files scattered around

The mix of tooling is the main work output of this project so far. Appreciate pointing out any work related to the Future