[Nix-dev] Nix as an Erlang Package Manager

[Mateusz Kowalczyk]

On 12/31/2014 02:29 AM, Eric des Courtis wrote:
> It seems many people on the Erlang mailing list have been contemplating
> using Nix as the official Erlang package manager. I think it's an
> interesting idea worth exploring.
> 
> Could someone from the Nix team jump in and take a look? Perhaps make some
> suggestions?
> 
> 
> http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2014-December/082119.html
> (Thread root)
> 
> http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2014-December/082270.html
> (Comments from Joe Armstrong one of the designers of the Erlang programming
> language)
> 
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 

The server is down for those URLs so I'll just pipe in in here: I think
using nix as a package manager for Erlang or another language is a great
idea.

I package Agda stuff in nixpkgs (though there is not a lot of libraries
available around) and Agda does not have a package manager. It works out
fine IMHO and I certainly prefer to please one package manager/build
system than two.

There is of course an advantage that language-specific systems have over
things like nix: nix is effectively a self-contained system, it will
grab all the build dependencies like GCC itself while things like
Haskell's cabal &c do nothing but Haskell and make the user fulfill
system dependencies by hand or alternatively use Haskell from their
system's package manager. Most people already have GCC so questions like
‘why do I have to get it again’ might arise.

I guess it just depends whether Erlang folk is ready to accept that they
will be incurring the weight of a second, full-fledged package manager
on their system. Of course my hopes as nix advocate is that they will
embrace it and maybe even make it their main one after a while ;).


-- 
Mateusz K.