I really love the temporary installs feature of nix OS. Often I just want to try some software once and don't want to use it afterwards. The temporary install feature is perfect for that, to help avoiding building up bloat from forgotten uninstalls.

But yes, you absolutely must have ripgrep.

I think one thing that's interesting about "temporary" installation is that nix has this notion of "present" vs "installed."

When you run a nix-shell the program is downloaded and if necessary built and put into the nix store, after leaving the shell it's all right there on your disk ("present") just not "installed" into the environment.

This is why the first time you run nix-shell with something new it downloads stuff while subsequent invocations are immediate. It also means that if you liked ripgrep in a shell, installing it is just has nix write out some new symlinks.

"nix-shell" is exactly how I first tried ripgrep. Of course, I installed it permanently moments later.

It’s with you for eternity, just hidden from programs unworthy of its excellence. Immutable is forever :)

Seconded! I think ripgrep is my favorite of all of these next-gen fundamental CLI tools.

For me, it replaces both grep and sed (except for in-place use of the latter), because I never write complicated sed programs.

" I don't do heresy." please explain.

Just replace "ripgrep" with "cowsay" or "neofetch" and read again.