Make it easy to find libraries

[dwt]

Right now, many libraries are easily findable by just searching for its name. E.G. libz.

However, many are not. Some examples:

• libssl
• libmagic

It's not that you do not eventually find them, but a huge use case for me is to search for a library that I need as a dependency of something, and it's often a multi step process of finding the right package to provide it.

I usually get around it with some time, but I had multiple instances where newbies (to nix) have become stuck, because they did not find the right package, or just assumed that it was not packaged in nixpkgs.

After some discussion on matrix, I was advised that creating an alias libmagic for a package like file is probably not the right approach. (However, #975 might actually make this viable), but instead search should be extended to show so-names of libraries included in the package and special casing the search so you can also search for so-names of libraries in addition to executable names.

What do you think? I would be willing to help here, but I would need some guidance on how this should be implemented (and of course wether you are willing to take this feature in).

[raboof]

I generally like the idea.

I wonder if we should hook into searching all of https://github.com/nix-community/nix-index somehow

[dwt]

@raboof I have never worked with elm or rust before, so I am a bit lost in how to approach this. I would like to help though. For example it seems there are no automated end to end tests for this. I could imagine to help with setting up playwright based tests for this feature.

[dwt]

@raboof That was also one of the suggestions on matrix. It does also sound sensible to me. :)

[raboof]

While I'm not opposed to having playwright tests, I wouldn't want you to spend a bunch of time writing them and then being disappointed when nobody shows up to implement the feature.

A nice first step might be to create a web API based on https://github.com/nix-community/nix-index-database and deploy that somewhere using the technology of your choice?

[dwt]

@raboof to be honest, my hope was that you implement the feature, and I help by providing some end to end tests. :)

I can look into this, I have friend who is itching to show me some Rust, perhaps I can rope him into showing me on trying to build something like this?

[raboof]

@raboof to be honest, my hope was that you implement the feature, and I help by providing some end to end tests. :)

Honestly I'd like to, but there's a lot of things I'd like to do in my spare time ;)

I can look into this, I have friend who is itching to show me some Rust, perhaps I can rope him into showing me on trying to build something like this?

That sounds like a reasonable choice. Let's make a deal: if you indeed manage to deploy the API, I'll help get the Elm side of things into shape.