An easy, relatively worry free installation/out of the box experience? The option to install uncommon software in a way that may be crappy but would work (make install?)?
That's what's holding me back, although I'm fascinated by the concept.
That's what's holding me back, although I'm fascinated by the concept.
For the second point, if you've got a package that just builds with the usual ./configure, make, make install, here is all you need to get a nix package for it:
{ stdenv }:
stdenv.mkDerivation {
name = "my-package";
src = ./.;
buildInputs = [ ... whatever dependencies you need ...];
}
> The only thing that's kind of annoying is installing binary distributions of packages since they need to be patched
This worries me, as every once in a while I do feel like using some proprietary app. What does it even mean more precisely? What about Steam games and such? Would it make sense to run them in a container or something like that?
I suppose I like to use unpopular software in general. How would I use (make a package or otherwise install) the odd go, python, js, nim, rust ... project that is made with its own weird build system? If I made a package for it I could very comfortably make changes to the code and directly recompile/reinstall, right?