pkgsrc vs Nix package manager

pkgin aims to be a tool similar to apt/yum for managing pkgsrc binaries by relying on pkg_summary for installing, removing and upgrading packages and dependencies, using a remote repo.

Has been adopted to be used on several Unix-like operating systems and Windows. It's also the default package manager of DragonflyBSD and of the (now discounted) Bluewall Linux distro.

Installs its own dependencies which means that it is very secure. Cannot install anything unless you use the "sudo" command which is in keeping with the Unix philosophy.

Fast software installation is possible by using binary packages. It's also easy to build from source which allows for different compile-time options (like different UI backends) as well as gaining access to pre-release versions of software in certain cases.

Backporting fixes can be done by cherry-picking updates from a newer branch (pkgsrc is released every 3 months) and creating a package. Sometimes bugs need to be fixed for production and there is neither a fix in newer pkgsrc nor the softwares upstream. So pkgsrc has tools like pkgdiff, mkpatches, etc. that help with developing patches and building binary packages from that. A bit of documentation about that process can be found here.

This means that you can install it fresh on a new installation of MacOS and have all your favorite apps installed right from the start.

Can be used from within Ansible to install packages on macOS.

This one works brilliantly.

Every time your profile changes, you get a new generation of your profile and older generations are kept around, so you can easily (and atomically) revert to older version of your profile.

Since packages are stored in the /nix directory, it won't overlap with anything you'd install in /usr/local or wherever else.

You can have different (probably overlapping) sets of software installed in two or more profiles that will be handled (changed, versioned, upgraded, reverted) independently. All software will be installed in the same /nix/store, so any overlaps between your sets will be physically installed only once.

Every time you install, delete or change anything you get a new fresh copy of your user environment (set of symlinks to files in /nix/store) that's stored in the same /nix/store and handled mostly the same way. Your "profile" (symlink to one of environments) is updated after everything else is ready, so you'll never end up in a half-finished state of your system.

Everything is owned by your user (unless you use more powerful multiuser mode that doesn't require root either).

Due to its functional nature, it can just download a binary package with the same hash if its available and it'll get the very same package as you'd build locally (to the last bit that is).

Nix treats packages like values in a functional language. Since they are built by functions without side effects they never change after they are built.

You can share packages via HTTP or SSH (push or pull) with just some simple commands.

Requires just one shell script to install, only one directory is created via sudo. This makes for a pretty simple install method that most can grasp.

Since it is compatible on Mac and Linux, there are many apps in their repos.