My main issue so far has been that the spec language isn't as simple as I hoped it would be and there are many packages missing or not up to date. The ability

My main issue so far has been that the spec language isn't as simple as I hoped it would be and there are many packages missing or not up to date. The ability to try out a new package and safely downgrade has been exactly as it says on the tin. So far I have primarily used it as an add on to other OSes and put it in the PATH before everything else. That way if something is missing in the nix packages I'll fall back to the other OS. And yes the AUR has no standard of quality, but the coverage is greater than anything I have ever seen. Figuring out exactly what build system and assumptions a package might have made is something I only do once the AUR package has failed.