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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Package Managers
  5. Nix vs SDKMAN

Nix vs SDKMAN

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Nix
Nix
Stacks598
Followers112
Votes0
GitHub Stars15.4K
Forks1.8K
SDKMAN
SDKMAN
Stacks19
Followers31
Votes1
GitHub Stars6.5K
Forks637

Nix vs SDKMAN: What are the differences?

  1. 1. Installation and Setup: Nix is a package manager that allows you to install and manage software packages on Linux and other Unix-like systems. It provides a purely functional and declarative approach to package management. On the other hand, SDKMAN is a software development kit manager that is primarily focused on managing software development kits, such as Java, Groovy, and Kotlin. It provides an easy way to install, manage, and switch between multiple SDKs.

  2. 2. Package Management: Nix uses a unique approach to package management called the Nix package manager, which allows for atomic upgrades and rollbacks of packages. It ensures that packages are isolated from each other and avoids conflicts between different versions of the same package. On the other hand, SDKMAN focuses more on managing software development kits and allows you to easily install, switch, and manage multiple SDKs, making it a convenient tool for developers.

  3. 3. Language Support: Nix supports a wide range of programming languages and provides a consistent and reproducible build process for packages. It allows you to define dependencies and build instructions in a declarative way, ensuring that the same package can be built in the same way on different systems. SDKMAN, on the other hand, is specifically designed for managing software development kits and provides a convenient way to install, switch, and manage SDKs for different programming languages.

  4. 4. Community and Ecosystem: Nix has a growing and active community of users and contributors. It has a comprehensive package repository called Nixpkgs, which contains a wide range of packages across different programming languages and domains. SDKMAN also has a strong community and provides a curated list of software development kits that can be easily installed and managed using the tool.

  5. 5. Usability and Ease of Use: Nix has a steep learning curve due to its functional and declarative approach to package management. It requires a deep understanding of the Nix expression language and its concepts. On the other hand, SDKMAN is designed to be easy to use and provides a simple command-line interface for installing, switching, and managing software development kits. It is aimed at developers who want a convenient way to manage their SDKs without having to deal with complex package management concepts.

  6. 6. Platform Support: Nix is primarily targeted at Linux and Unix-like systems, although it can also be used on other operating systems such as macOS. It provides a consistent package management experience across different platforms. SDKMAN, on the other hand, is designed to be cross-platform and supports multiple operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows. It allows you to install and manage software development kits on different platforms with ease.

In Summary, Nix is a general-purpose package manager that follows a declarative approach to package management, while SDKMAN is a software development kit manager that focuses on managing SDKs and provides an easy way to install, switch, and manage multiple SDKs across different platforms.

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Detailed Comparison

Nix
Nix
SDKMAN
SDKMAN

It makes package management reliable and reproducible. It provides atomic upgrades and rollbacks, side-by-side installation of multiple versions of a package, multi-user package management and easy setup of build environments.

It provides a convenient way to install, switch, list and remove candidates. Using it, you can now manage parallel versions of multiple SDKs easily on any Unix-like operating system.

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Multi-platform; Java all the way down; APIs; Lightweight
Statistics
GitHub Stars
15.4K
GitHub Stars
6.5K
GitHub Forks
1.8K
GitHub Forks
637
Stacks
598
Stacks
19
Followers
112
Followers
31
Votes
0
Votes
1
Pros & Cons
No community feedback yet
Pros
  • 1
    Lightweight, fast
Integrations
No integrations available
Akutan
Akutan
GNU Bash
GNU Bash
Ruby
Ruby
cURL
cURL

What are some alternatives to Nix, SDKMAN?

Meteor

Meteor

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

Bower

Bower

Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.

Elm

Elm

Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.

Julia

Julia

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library.

Racket

Racket

It is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language based on the Scheme dialect of Lisp. It is designed to be a platform for programming language design and implementation. It is also used for scripting, computer science education, and research.

PureScript

PureScript

A small strongly typed programming language with expressive types that compiles to JavaScript, written in and inspired by Haskell.

Composer

Composer

It is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you.

pnpm

pnpm

It uses hard links and symlinks to save one version of a module only ever once on a disk. When using npm or Yarn for example, if you have 100 projects using the same version of lodash, you will have 100 copies of lodash on disk. With pnpm, lodash will be saved in a single place on the disk and a hard link will put it into the node_modules where it should be installed.

Bun

Bun

Develop, test, run, and bundle JavaScript & TypeScript projects—all with Bun. Bun is an all-in-one JavaScript runtime & toolkit designed for speed, complete with a bundler, test runner, and Node.js-compatible package manager.

Homebrew

Homebrew

Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t. Homebrew installs packages to their own directory and then symlinks their files into /usr/local.

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