Usually, I prefer manually installing the packages needed for getting started with a new language or technlogy.

I avoid using distro package managers since they tend to be a bit outdated in this regard, and specialised package managers like SDKMAN! seem overkill for one or more packages. Exceptions being languages with excellent tooling and version management like Rust or Ocaml.

I’ve been doing this for a while and was wondering what the general consensus is

Edit: Thanks for your replies everyone! I’ve decided to stick with my distro package manager.

  • Shareni@programming.dev
    1·
    9 months ago

    Damn, that’s a wild ride.

    I’m honestly not sure how useful that flakehub is, and I feel the same dislike as I do for like AUR. First time I’m seeing it though.

    In your experience, do you think using nix develop would slim things down without sacrificing too much comfort?

    Honestly, I’ve only ever used it a few times when I see that a repo has it. I checked out some of them, and with barely no nix language knowledge I was able to roughly understand what’s going on, but I doubt I’d be able to make it without a template or LLM.

    I’ll keep devbox in mind if I ever need that functionality.