[Bug]: Bootstrap script fails on Intel Macs due to Determinate installer

[johnhubbs]

What happened?

Running bootstrap.sh on an Intel Mac (x86_64-darwin) fails during Step 1: Determinate Nix before the flake is ever evaluated.

The bootstrap script attempts to install Nix using the Determinate installer:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix
| sh -s -- install --no-confirm

The installer fails with a 404 while attempting to download an installer for x86_64-darwin, preventing the bootstrap process from continuing.

Replacing the Determinate installer with the upstream Nix installer allowed the bootstrap process to proceed.

What did you expect to happen?

I expected bootstrap.sh to complete successfully on a supported Intel Mac, or for the repository documentation to indicate that Intel Macs are no longer supported if that is the intended behavior.

Reproduction steps

1. Clone the repository on an Intel Mac (x86_64-darwin).
2. Ensure Nix is not already installed.
3. Run ./bootstrap.sh.
4. The bootstrap process fails during Step 1: Determinate Nix before darwin-rebuild is reached.

Environment

macOS

Nix or home-manager generation

N/A — the failure occurs before Nix is installed and before any nix-darwin or Home Manager generation is created.

Relevant logs or output

Note: Even after replacing the Determinate installer with the upstream Nix installer, the bootstrap still requires macOS 14.0 or newer. Older macOS releases are not sufficient.

Environment: nix-darwin bootstrap

==> Step 1: Determinate Nix
info: downloading the Determinate Nix Installer
warn: curl (22): The requested URL returned error: 404
error: installer for platform 'x86_64-darwin' not found, this may be unsupported

A workaround is to replace the Determinate installer in bootstrap.sh with the upstream Nix installer:

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

After that change, the bootstrap process continues normally on macOS 14.x.

[johnhubbs]

I'm going to write this out in regular English also, so it's clear. I was trying your dotfiles repository on an Intel Mac (x86_64-darwin) and ran into an issue during the bootstrap process.

The bootstrap script currently installs Nix using:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix
| sh -s -- install --no-confirm

On an Intel Mac, this fails immediately with:

==> Step 1: Determinate Nix
info: downloading the Determinate Nix Installer
warn: curl (22): The requested URL returned error: 404
error: installer for platform 'x86_64-darwin' not found, this may be unsupported

This appears to be because the Determinate installer no longer publishes installers for Intel macOS (x86_64-darwin), so the bootstrap process is no longer reproducible on Intel hardware.

Replacing the Determinate installer with the upstream Nix installer allowed the bootstrap process to continue:

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon

One additional note: even with this change, the installation still requires macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later. Attempting the bootstrap on older macOS releases will fail because current versions of nix-darwin no longer support them.

It may be worth updating the README to mention:

Apple Silicon is the primary supported platform.
Intel Macs require using the upstream Nix installer instead of the Determinate installer.
macOS 14.0 or newer is required.

Otherwise, the rest of the setup appears to work as expected once Nix is installed.

Thanks for making the repository available.