Comment by NewJazz
1 day ago
There are probably still ways to maintain a source archive with a ports system. Just analyze the sources used by builds, create a mirror, and redirect fetches to use the mirror. It's not that crazy. The packaging would still be a separate affair.
This is exactly what Nix does, if I understand correctly: the "mirror" is cache.nixos.org as mentioned in XorNot's reply to the same parent post.
I'm about 80% certain that cache.nixos.org caches the results of the builds, not the input sources.
I think it does both, at least for some sources. After all, sources are derivations too.
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