Comment by whazor

Comment by whazor 3 days ago

5 replies

Nix currently has the most packages of any distribution, see https://repology.org/

The model of having packages on Github with pull requests scales very well.

Therefore, you could argue that people are getting things done with Nix.

andreasmetsala 2 hours ago

How many of them actually work though? If you end up having to go fix upstream packages then having a tool manage your environment is not useful since you still have to understand the domain.

With Nix I usually ended up in a situation where I had to both figure out how to configure my environment _and_ fix the upstream Nix packages. At that point it’s just easier to stick to Homebrew and some custom shell scripts.

dingi 3 days ago

> Nix currently has the most packages of any distribution, see https://repology.org/

This is a meaningless point. Different distros split packages differently.

  • gf000 3 days ago

    Nix's ecosystem really has exploded over the last couple of years. Even very obscure packages can be found, that are definitely AUR/PPA-territory in other distros.

    At least, that's my personal experience.

  • whazor 3 days ago

    While I agree that it’s somewhat difficult to compare. Especially as node and python packages are separately packaged in Nix.

    However it is clear that the Nix folks are quite productive with maintaining packages. So that statement is judgemental, as it implies that all those packages are not ‘the right things to get done’.

  • yarekt 3 days ago

    No it’s very much meaningful. for every new ecosystem it’s immediately graded based on whether it has the critical mass of adoption. The build and release system is great, what I actually wish for is nixpkgs to offer debs and rpms to ensure that maintainers flock here