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This is true and in reality most Nix users are package authors. You will probably find things that are not packaged and you will have to author them. Just want

This is true and in reality most Nix users are package authors. You will probably find things that are not packaged and you will have to author them. Just wanted to add that Nix currently has the most software packaged in any distribution, and almost the same number of packages as AUR: https://repology.org/repositories/graphs https://repology.org/repositories/graphs If you want to use a Git repository for something, most of the time you can just 'override' a packages source code input to a new version. In Nix, even source code is actually an 'input' (a parameter) to a build script (a function), so you can just provide a new copy of the source code (pass a different parameter to the function) and rebuild. Though you have to be careful with overriding derivations with the same name on which a lot of other derivations are dependent, since it will rebuild every transitive dependency as well. Of course, if you are using a overridden derivation just for your own projects, you could give it a different name.

aseipp 8y ago
I'm not totally sure if those graphs are really representative of that, or at least they should be taken with a grain of salt. I've been using Nix for quite a while and I add packages I'm missing semi-regularly (although many of them are minor). The metapackage database on repology.org seems to indicate that it tracks every individual Haskell, PyPI package etc that we ship, so it's actually including thousands and thousands of auto-generated packages, and duplicate versions of everything in the top-level. I'm not sure if that qualifies for "most packaged software" (since it skews the numbers very sharply in particular directions), but I guess you'd have to define it first. But Nix is different enough that it might be hard to have any kind of straight comparison.
ptman 8y ago
Interesting. Typically Debian has been the distro where you can find anything packaged. Not always the latest version, though, unless you run unstable.

aseipp 8y ago

I'm not totally sure if those graphs are really representative of that, or at least they should be taken with a grain of salt. I've been using Nix for quite a while and I add packages I'm missing semi-regularly (although many of them are minor). The metapackage database on repology.org seems to indicate that it tracks every individual Haskell, PyPI package etc that we ship, so it's actually including thousands and thousands of auto-generated packages, and duplicate versions of everything in the top-level. I'm not sure if that qualifies for "most packaged software" (since it skews the numbers very sharply in particular directions), but I guess you'd have to define it first. But Nix is different enough that it might be hard to have any kind of straight comparison.

ptman 8y ago

Interesting. Typically Debian has been the distro where you can find anything packaged. Not always the latest version, though, unless you run unstable.