nixpkgs isn't doing too hot

Nix infrastructure faces challenges as Nixpkgs core team dissolves

Open source maintenance remains a struggle, particularly for the Nix ecosystem. While Nix, NixOS, and Nixpkgs have fostered a massive community effort, governance complexities have plagued the project for some time. The transition to structured governance bodies and teams aimed to stabilize the situation, but recent events suggest these efforts have faltered. The Nixpkgs core team recently announced their dissolution, citing struggles with member attrition and an ineffective Steering Committee.

The broader issue appears to be burnout among volunteers, who have taken on the challenge of managing and maintaining Nixpkgs, a vast project encompassing various aspects such as NixOS, packaging, language-specific tooling, CI, and release management. The sheer complexity of Nixpkgs, including its CI system that builds a large package set for multiple platforms, makes it difficult for a small group of volunteers to sustain.

Efforts to fork Nixpkgs, such as the ill-fated Floral project, have struggled to overcome the project's complexity and scale. Maintaining Nixpkgs effectively requires a CI system capable of building a vast majority of packages for various platforms and architectures, a task deemed intractable without the necessary expertise and resources.

The current situation highlights the need for a more realistic approach to Nixpkgs' scope. Selectively accepting only essential packages could alleviate the burden on the volunteer team and allow the project to thrive under better leadership. However, the challenge lies in finding a solution that acknowledges the project's complexity without reducing its comprehensiveness, which many users rely on.