[Nix-dev] "Package archeology" in nixpkgs

[Michael Raskin]

>Can there be a better database rather than a text file?

The problem is not about a _single_ text file; the problem is that you
need to read some file specific to a package to find out its name, as 
opposed to its attribute name,

I am pretty sure we don't want to mention package versions in
all-packages.nix because the version in name will never match the actual
tarball version…

So the solution would require some way of careful caching (note that to
find updates reliably you need to stat() all the files — so caching has
to sometimes lag behind the actual files…)

>On 1/09/2014 4:04 AM, Michael Raskin wrote:
>>> 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.