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A comment on Ask HN: Why does every package+module system become a Rube Goldberg machine?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Why does every package+module system become a Rub... by pxc on Monday January 30, 2023 @02:51PM (#34585430)
Pretend I asked the nice version of this, for the benefit of other readers?

I do think a Nix-like tool to be used for writing/replacing package managers for new programming languages would benefit from some dependency resolving functionality, instead of just saying 'shove it in a monorepo or pin via VCS refs instead of semver'. Is that not necessary?

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Re:Ask HN: Why does every package+module system become a Rub... by otabdeveloper4 on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:07PM (#34585628)
Nix is capable of that, but you need a database mapping versions to VCS refs.

Nixpkgs doesn't go down that road because it would be unwieldy at their scale, but more specialized nix-based tools do.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does every package+module system become a Rub... by pxc on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:14PM (#34585715)
(I actually think Nixpkgs could and should go down this road, with a couple of caveats, for immense benefit. But I'm curious about what tazjin thinks here.)
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Re:Ask HN: Why does every package+module system become a Rub... by haradion on Monday January 30, 2023 @07:26PM (#34588954)
At least for (unlocked) flake sources, you could probably use a branch naming convention instead of a separate database, although that requires your repo to be set up a specific way.
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