Nix Software - new homepage, top maintainers, and more

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Now the homepage greets users with a new design. The slide content updates every 3–4 days. New users can more easily navigate directly to the category they need. (I took the category icons from Gnome Software, I hope that’s legal.)

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On the package detail page, the information block has been redesigned. The menu is now organized into tabs. A link to the package’s .nix source file has been added. The maintainers list is clickable, allowing you to go directly to a maintainer’s detail page.

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A new page has been added with a list of all maintainers. They are sorted by the number of packages they maintain. There’s also a search function to find yourself or a friend =).
UPD: Sorting has been disabled.

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On a maintainer’s page, you can now see a list of all the packages they maintain, and there’s an option to send them an email.

Since my previous post, zero proposals have been submitted for adding or improving package metadata. I want to draw attention to this. The site has a ready-made form for submitting package metadata, which undergoes manual moderation. Every member of the Nix community can participate in adding or updating this data. The more data there is in the database, the better the search works, and the more appealing the site becomes.

Nix Software - https://nixsoftware.org

About the reason for creating a new topic

I can’t post in the previous topic for this reason, but I really wanted to share the latest updates with you.

4 Likes
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Looks pretty.

Two things I spot: I do not like looking at a second of fake-content-placeholders every time i search or refresh a page since I’m more of a fan of server side request rendering. The Installation methods animation is a bit odd, I’d rather look at the content itself not at it moving.

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Due to dissatisfaction on Reddit, maintainer sorting has been disabled. The ordinal number and the number of packages for each maintainer are no longer counted.

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i appreciate enthusiasm, but whats the purpose? it has the same issues as search.nixos.org but worse: it links to the package function instead of its invocation, making it unclear how this function actually evaluates; but it also hides the package name making it even harder to find the correct definition or even just remember which one you looked at previously. in fact, if you search for “libreoffice” you get multiple packages with seemingly the same name and (missing) logo. how even is determined which variant gets the logo?

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The purpose is obvious.

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  1. Now the catalog page shows the packages attr_path. I hope this will make it easier to identify the required package.
  2. Metadata can be added for all packages. Identifying the main variant is a good question. Personally, I think that between libreoffice and libreoffice-still-unwrapped, the main variant would be the first one. Ideally, the other package variants should include a description explaining exactly how they differ from the original. Descriptions, like other metadata, can be submitted through a special form. The main thing is not to confuse the user, so they can quickly find the program they need. This is exactly the problem the site is trying to solve.
  3. Am I correct in understanding that you would like to see links like this with a specific line reference, e.g. libreoffice/default.nix#L757, rather than the current links that simply point to the file?
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  1. thats awesome!
  2. no, i want to see the arguments passed to the package function, thus where the callPackage call happened. for libreoffice-fresh i believe it’s: /pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix#L9979
    the package function link can still be provided, but this link should definitely also be given, because it allows to read the package function knowing the actual values for the arguments, here we see variant=fresh (in many cases it’s not so obvious)
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Nix Software - Options Page, Optimization, and More

  • Added a page with a list of options.
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  • Added a new tab on some package detail pages to view package options.
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  • Added the ability to switch the channel on the package detail page.
  • Added a module filter on the catalog page (a module is a package that has options).
  • Significantly improved website performance by optimizing database queries.
  • Redesigned the site header, updated some translations, and made other minor improvements.

Nix Software - https://nixsoftware.org

1 Like