NixPkgs version badge

[peterbecich]

📋 Description

I see the Hackage badge: https://shields.io/badges/hackage-version
Here is an example of it in use: https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server?tab=readme-ov-file#haskell-language-server
I assume that functions by making a call to Hackage Server.

It would be very cool to have a similar badge for NixPkgs. This is not limited to Haskell.

🔗 Data

• nix search tool; this pulls from NixPkgs directly:
  https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3-search

$ nix search nixpkgs#haskellPackages '^haskell-language-server' 
* legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.haskellPackages.haskell-language-server (2.5.0.0)
  LSP server for GHC

• Keeping a local copy of NixPkgs Git repo and searching it:

$ nix search .#haskellPackages '^haskell-language-server' 
* legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.haskellPackages.haskell-language-server (2.5.0.0)
  LSP server for GHC

• another example:

$ nix search .#haskell-language-server
* legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.haskell-language-server (2.5.0.0)
  LSP server for GHC

• another example:

$ nix search .#firefox    
* legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.firefox (123.0.1)
  A web browser built from Firefox source tree

• Less usable, UI search
  https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=unstable&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=haskell-language-server

🎤 Motivation

Encourage the use of packages hosted on NixPkgs, and also encourage contribution to update the NixPkgs

Thanks

[chris48s]

We don't do badges that scrape web pages or require installing CLI tools to get the data. Is the necessary data available via some documented public API?

Also, is this the same as #9551 or are they 2 different things?

[peterbecich]

Is the necessary data available via some documented public API?

I will look into this, https://search.nixos.org/packages may not have this API.

No, it is different from #9551
NixPkgs is a larger set of packages than FlakeHub, about 80K. I think most Nix packages are based on a GitHub repository. However, the repository owner is often not the same person who maintains the corresponding Nix package. Sometimes someone packages a repository with Nix and then does not maintain it ongoing. If the repository displays a badge with the Nix package version, it may encourage contributions to update the Nix package. More than anything I think it would raise awareness of the availability of Nix packages.

I'm referring only to official Nix packages in this repo https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs searchable here https://search.nixos.org/packages ; I'm not using the correct definition of "Nix package", which could be anywhere.

Thanks