normal NixOS users won't have ~/.nix-channels

[das-g]

trafficstars

Steps to reproduce

1. install and configure NixOS 17.09, including a non-root, non-system user, e.g. users.extraUsers.das-g.isNormalUser = true; (don't configure any nix channels for that user, yet)
2. on that installation, as that normal user, go through Nix Pills, Chapter 3, without first performing the nix installation of Chapter 2. (After all, NixOS already comes with nix, doesn't it.)

Expected

What you see should match what is described in the chapter.

Observed

At section 3.9, you'll notice that you don't have any ~./nix-channels file in that normal user's home. (Just /root/.nix-channels in root's home.) If (like me), you're new to NixOS, you may wonder whether that's normal on NixOS or whether you did miss something during the NixOS installation/configuration.

[Ericson2314]

Try doing a nix-channel --add ..., and see if that creates the file. Normal uses by default have no channels, so I guess nobody bothered to initialized the empty file when nix-channel will do it for you?