[Annatar]

This is all well and good, and certainly the more examples the better, but this will only work so long as one is on GNU/Linux and so long as the compile or link stage don't bust.

And then, this whole complicated wrapper shatters.

[__david__]

The Nix package manager also runs on macOS. Think of it as a cross platform Homebrew. Your other objections apply to all package managers, and not just Nix.

[Annatar]

I'm principally against abstracting package management across platforms, because experience has taught me that the software management subsystem of the target platform is the best system for that platform. I see no point in this abstraction since I understand that the best packaging format is the native format, and I've no problem mastering the native format.

[__david__]

Then you should also be happy to know that NixOS is an OS where Nix packages are the native package system.

[Annatar]

I couldn't care less about NixOS, as I'm a UNIX (IRIX, Solaris, illumos/SmartOS, HP-UX) guy and always will be. I run Solaris 10 and SmartOS on my infrastructure, before that I ran IRIX and HP-UX as well on it.