[toomanyducks]

I think the issues with traditional packages all boil down to the fact that packages are not files. Packages are some transformed instance of some code, operating over a computer's resources in some way. Sure, eventually you get down to the fundamental file abstraction, but it can take a bit: all the variations of building from a single code base. What I like about Nix is that it stops representing packages as files and has its own declarative syntax. The OP observed what really is a side effect of that change, and it's great! Sometimes, though, I wish it went a bit farther than it does - there's room for a few more useful transformations between a package's code base, a package, and a file. If the nix program itself took a bit more control over the system, I think it would end up in a really cool place. The specifics of that, though, I do not know.

[pxc]

You might be interested in Nomia, a project recently started by a veteran Nix hacker at some startup. The idea is to generalize the store layer from Nix's model (package management) to a more universal one (resource management)

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/announcing-nomia-a-general-res...