[Ericson2314]

> It's never been in-scope for it to figure out how to invoke a particular compiler or linker.

True

> Nix is a package manager, not a build tool.

False. Nix should be the go-to tool for executing and caching all dependency graphs. Just the planning of those graphs is domain-specific and out of Nix's purvue.

Build systems that use Ninja actually get the execution-planning separation right. (Try Meson if you hate CMake.) So basically, we just need to make Nix better than Ninja in every way, and then hook it up to these build systems (directly or with ninja2nix).

Of course, then we will demonstrate all the impurities and non-determinism in people's CMakeLists. That alone is the cultural problem to solve for normie evangelizing. Everything else is technical and there's use bemoaning Nix is just too weird.