That's certainly one option. The unique thing about dotfiles is that everyone has a different 'best solution'. The setup outlined in my post has the advantage of being highly configurable and programmable. However, for some people it might make more sense to use a plain git repo with symlinks as installing Nix on all their devices could be a nonstarter.
I'm curious, what do you use to manage tools that don't have a `source $SOME_PATH` option. Do you symlink?