Nix42b is a GUI for managing nixpkgs packages (install, run, remove…) on a Linux distribution. The project also provides a script for installing & configuring nix, cachix and nix42b.
The goal of this project is to help using nix as an alternative to snap/flatpak/PPA/… A typical use case is when a user wants a software that is not in the software repository of his/her distribution.
This project is still experimental.
Cool project! How’d you come up with the 42b part of the name?
Thanks.
About the project name: “42” because Nix is a kind of “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” about package management, and “b” because I already had an implementation less satisfactory.
Most importantly, this name is bad enough to encourage other developers to take the idea and start a better project…
That’s very cool!
I was recently thinking of something similar to this: A GUI configuration manager for NixOS that has all the options so that you can e.g. checkmark them for booleans (and other appropriate things like dropdowns or lists, depending on the corresponding option type). It should read configuration.nix and write changes back to it, with a fast instant-search at the top.
Also cool that you used Haskell + GTK, I want to try these new GI bindings soon as well.
On contrary, nix42b is pretty neat name.
nixpr isn’t an explicitly typed language (right?). Seems like it would be easier to automatically build a UI if the language was typed.
Correct. It’s what I’d call “dynamically typed” (and the type system is relatively weak).