[Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

[Michael Raskin]

>On 31 August 2014 18:27, Michael Raskin <7c6f434c at mail.ru> wrote:
>> I'd say, though, that only name-based operations drop in performance
>> that way…
>>
>> Although for some strange reason we still recommend this way of using
>> Nix.
>
>Nix newb asks: what would be the superiour alternative, then?

nix-env -iA insted of nix-env -i

The difference is that you use attribute name, not package name; lookup
by attribute name allows to read only all-packages.nix and relevant 
sources, not entire NixPkgs tree.