[Nix-dev] Flattening pkgs tree in nixpkgs/pkgs

[Mathnerd314]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 5:04 PM, Tomasz Czyż <tomasz.czyz at gmail.com> wrote:

> What do you think about moving all packages into flat namespace?
>

GitHub limits directories to 1000 files, for example here:
https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/tree/master/src/test/run-pass
We definitely have more than that in nixpkgs, so some form of hierarchy is
needed.

I would suggest doing it by hosting site / provider: all KDE packages in
one directory, all GNOME in another, GNU in a third, SourceForge in a
fourth, Kernel.org in a fifth, etc., with a final "misc" directory for
one-package sites.

It does mean that packages have to be moved around when their hosting
changes (e.g. VLC's move away from Sourceforge), but on the other hand it
makes it very easy to find all broken packages when a site shuts down (e.g.
Google Code). In general packages change hosting very infrequently, so it
seems reasonable to me.

The directory structure under that can be flat or chosen by maintainers.

Search, nix-env, and command-not-found remain the best way of finding
packages, as in https://nixos.org/wiki/Howto_find_a_package_in_NixOS.

-- Mathenrd314
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