I think nix already does what you want for search, but the install suggestion is a good idea. `nix install packagename` would fall outside the current command

I think nix already does what you want for search, but the install suggestion is a good idea. `nix install packagename` would fall outside the current command convention (since `profile` is a command and `install` is a subcommand of profile), so they would have to introduce a new top-level command "install" which is aliased to `profile install`. Given the `nix` command itself is a newer/experimental alternative to `nix-env`, et al., in a seemingly similar spirit to `apt-get/apt-cache` -vs- `apt`, I think creating such an alias would be a very reasonable thing to do. `nix search packagename` afaik currently does what you (probably) want. It defaults to searching in both `packages.<system>` & `legacyPackages.<system>`, so nixpkgs will be included. I suspect the inclusion of `nixpkgs` in the examples above is actually narrowing the search, possibly for speed: doing `nix search packagename` is currently a bit slow.