Finding a specific version of a package is also really difficult. It requires you to find the commit hash in the Nixpkgs repo that last contained it, and there isn't a central search engine that lets you map version to commit.

We ended up building package version search into the Devbox CLI for this reason (https://www.jetpack.io/devbox/docs/guides/pinning_packages/#...). There's also a 3rd party site that lets you search for Nix package versions (https://lazamar.co.uk/nix-versions/)

or https://search.nixos.org

if folks want a easy (and good way) to get up and running in the nix ecosystem w/services ala replace docker compose then https://devenv.sh is the shizz

Ended up building a tool which indexes every version of every package into a searchable tool. Was hacked together in a weekend, so the UI needs some polishing, but it's functional :)

https://nixdex.dev

That's a use case, but for from the best. Nix lets you create immutable, reproducible packages/OSs/deploys--and can be built on arbitrary fleets of machines with shared caches. Just bringing in tools to the developer environment means the distribution of its tools is immutable but everything you plan to do with it inside that environment is mututable. The forest is missed for the trees if folks think dev shells are the killer feature.

> Speaks to the lack of user focus in the Nix community.

Not really. Nix is not a tool, it's a toolkit for making your own tools. Very much in the vein of Unix, shell, etc.

Many people don't use Nix for "installing" stuff. I personally use it for deploying software to servers without the (congnitive and performance) overhead of containers.

I find search.nixos.org immensely useful, but don't really need it from the CLI.

What is confusing about finding Nix packages? Just go to search.nixos.org

There has been a trend in software dev towards solving problems that don’t need solved. I’ve never been confused about how to find packages for nix.

If you try to run a binary from replit's shell it will find a package to run it with and will prompt you if there are multiple options

why does it query search.nixos.org, rather than looking through your local nixpkgs? just because of how tricky it'd be to handle the nix language or hacking on the nix toolchain proper?

also I agree that it's ridiculous nix doesn't have a search command. it baffles me.

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