Nixpkgs: Difference between weechat and weechat-unwrapped is unclear

[bdesham]

Issue description

Nixpkgs offers two packages for Weechat: weechat (a.k.a. weechat-bin-env) and weechat-unwrapped (a.k.a. weechat). These packages seem to have identical description and longDescription fields, so it’s not clear what the difference is between them. How should I decide which one to install? When would I want to install one or the other? Weechat also has its own section in the Nixpkgs manual but the difference is not mentioned there either.

If someone wants to explain the difference to me in this issue thread, I’d be more than happy to open a PR that adds that information to the longDescription fields of the two packages 🙂

Technical details

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 4.4.0-151-generic, Ubuntu, 16.04.6 LTS (Xenial Xerus)
• multi-user?: no
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.2.2
• channels(bdesham): "nixpkgs-19.09pre184398.d98a165de78"
• nixpkgs: /home/bdesham/.nix-defexpr/channels/nixpkgs

[teto]

The X / X-unwrapped is a common scheme in nixpkgs to differentiate the "naked" software ("unwrapped") and the software with its necessary/expected ecosystem (plugins).
The disctinction between the 2 is done to prevent from having to rebuild the original software when changing a small parameter. This "naked"/orginal software remains unchanged while the wrapped one will be rebuilt (usually symlinkg different store paths) upon ,e.g., plugin addition/deletion, which is much faster.
I remember being confused a lot by this when starting nixos so I encourage documenting this. I also wish it would have been called X/X-wrapped rather than the other way around (X should refer to a pristine X else it's decieving IMO, but I understand the current way: people running X expect it to behave as X so name it X).
You can look at all-packages.nix for wrapNeovim / neovim /neovim-unwrapped for instance

[FRidh]

We should have a section in the Nixpkgs manual describing this common approach of composition using wrappers and the naming. And indeed, the description needs to be updated when wrapping otherwise it is not clear for users.

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[Dorsug]

Still important to me. I agree on the fact that it should be documented somewhere.