User persistence only links/binds persistent directories, ignoring files

[Hugo-Heagren]

I am so confused.

I have a relatively simple config. It works flawlessly for system files but I also want to persist some files and some directories in my home directory (and have everything else in my home dir wiped on boot).

I have declarations in my config to persist a few different files and dirs in /home/hugo. They are all persisted (i.e. in /persist) between boots, but after booting, the only one which shows up in my home dir is config/.git -- the others are not mounted/symlinked. What could be causing this?

Some more details:

I want to persist these things: .config/git (a directory) and .config/emacs/init.el, .config/enironment.d/10-home-manager.conf, .bash_history (all files). Only the directory shows up after boots, even though I have this in /persistent:

/persistent/home/hugo
├─ .bash_history
├─ .config
  ├─ emacs
  │   └─ init.el
  └─ environment.d
  │  └─ 10-home-manager.conf -> <long nix store filepath>
  └─ git
     └─ config -> <long nix store filepath>	 

Here are some other strange behaviours:

If I run nixos-rebuild switch then all the directories necessary for this file structure are placed in my home directory: I have ~/.config/emacs, ~/.config/git and ~/.config/environment.d.

But ~/.config/emacs doesn't contain a file init.el. ~/.config/environment.d does contain 10-home-manager.conf, and ~/.config/git does contain config.

If I then reboot, only the git directory is persisted. The other two directories are removed entirely.

What's going on? What am I doing wrong?

[Hugo-Heagren]

Note to self/anyone else -- discussion in #97 seems highly relevant here, though the specific errors/issues which originally motivated it are now 404.