I'd be okay doing that to install packages but what I don't like is the N number of ways to install packages. Do I use nix-env? Do I use the new nix CLI? Do I make an entry in configuration.nix? Do I use this thing called flakes which is marked as experimental but almost everyone seems to be onboard with it?
There's no central and definitive source of documentation either. There's the official NixOS website, nix pills, nixos.wiki, blog posts from prominent developers, and other sources I don't remember.
Seems like a fragmented mess to me.
* You have to learn a new and kind of knobbly single use language. * If you are going the NixOS route there's the non-trival learning curve for that as well. * And the package manager itself is more than a little confusing.
As for the workflow. I use NixOS on my personal machine. I'm fine with it because its typically pretty quick and happens infrequently. Buuuuuuut I wouldn't really advocate for NixOS. Its cool. I like it. I'm never going to recoop the time and effort I spent learning how to use it.
I understand this isn't aligned with the purity stance that nix has but if they were able to allow this use case, it would most likely get more people doing it the right way eventually.
I can't drink all the kool-aid at once, I really need to replace bits of my workflow at a time and I can't do that with nix currently.
The approach I've laid out in my original comment (using `nix-env`) provides a bad developer experience and makes me not able(willing?) to move forward with the adopting more of the practices. If the initial experience was better, I'd invest more time learning more.