nix-config/modules/packages/nano.org

Nano

• Nano
  • Enabling Nano
  • Configuration

Nano

I mostly live in Emacs, but I still want a sane fallback editor for quick edits over SSH. Here’s the nixos.nano module.

{
  flake.modules.nixos.nano = {
    programs.nano = {
      <<enable-nano>>
      <<syntax-highlight>>
      <<nanorc>>
    };
  };
}

Enabling Nano

enable = true;

Configuration

First of all, let’s enable syntax highlighting. Nothing fancy here, the basics are enough.

syntaxHighlight = true;

A handful of nanorc settings make it behave a bit more like a modern editor.

Setting	Why
tabsize 2	Two spaces per tab, matching how I indent code
autoindent	Keep a new line at the same indentation as the one above it
atblanks	Let soft-wrapped lines indent to match the line above, blanks too
linenumbers	Show line numbers in the margin
smarthome	Make Home jump to the first non-blank character, not column 0
softwrap	Wrap long lines visually instead of running them off-screen

set tabsize 2
set autoindent
set atblanks
set linenumbers
set smarthome
set softwrap

nanorc = ''
  <<make-nanorc()>>
'';