> Hi, > > John Altobelli <[email protected]> > writes: > >> I feel this system is much easier to locate packages and more friendly >> to new developers. > > Having never looked at Gentoo portage before I started contributing to > Nixpkgs, I don't share this feeling. ;-) > > Nixpkgs' layout is documented under > `maintainers/docs/classification.txt' and is quite intuitive, except in > some rare cases (e.g., the `misc' catch-all directories). Having a > single-level hierarchy as shown at http://gentoo-portage.com/Browse > seems less convenient to me: why have, say, `app-emacs' and > `app-editors' instead of `applications/editors' and > `applications/editors/emacs'?
After reviewing maintainers/docs/classification.txt it certainly seems incomplete to me. For example there is no mention of os-specific and quite a few packages lie under that directory. I prefer the convenience of going to the pkgs directory and listing the directories and knowing exactly where a new project should go. Plus if I search for the project within the gentoo system, I should have a good idea where they put it. Certainly some directories can be combined/removed because they don't pertain to nix, but if this structure is still desired that could be discussed in the future. Gentoo has a large number of contributors that only submit one or two packages into the system and I think that the file system hierarchy they have in place makes it much more comfortable for them to find where to start. > > Most importantly, regardless of one's preference for one classification > or another, I think changing the classification would be a large change > for little in return. Just for clarification, the "large change" would only be in the minds of the developers, since the coding is completely done. I figured if I brought this up before I had the code in place people might get fixed up on how difficult it would be to fix every import and selectVersion throughout the system, but that's already done. Now it just needs to be judged as an improvement or not. Ludo, thanks for your comments, I just ask that you checkout the git repos and pick a couple random packages to see if you can find them easily within the system (without cheating - all-packages.nix). I can't imagine a project that couldn't be found within two or three directories, especially when you get used to the system. (Possibly skip editors since they seem to be too split up - but that can be fixed later). > > Thanks, > Ludo'. > > _______________________________________________ > nix-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.cs.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev > _______________________________________________ nix-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.cs.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
