Question: Does pkgx use lots of space

[godalming123]

I know that some package managers such as nix end up packaging lots of different versions of packages as dependencies which give a much better safety guarantee but take up a lot more space. How is it handled here?

[j1philli]

From my understanding, only the version you need is downloaded and cached. As it gets updated, if you update it the new version will be cached. The old one will remain.

[jhheider]

Mine currently uses about 5.6GB, but I'm constantly building new versions of things, especially giant things.

The great news is we've packaged dua so you can easily visualize it:

$ dua ~/.pkgx/*
 184.32 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/google.github.io
 454.66 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/zlib.net
 536.58 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/pyyaml.org
 548.86 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/info-zip.org
 573.44 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/openslide.org
 696.32 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/bytereef.org
 770.05 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/fmt.dev
 794.62 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/gflags.github.io
 831.49 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libexpat.github.io
 831.49 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/tsl0922.github.io
 872.45 KB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/oberhumer.com
   1.36 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libsodium.org
   1.37 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libpng.org
   1.42 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/ijg.org
   1.46 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libuv.org
   1.47 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/openjpeg.org
   1.49 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/tukaani.org
   1.63 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/sourceware.org
   1.72 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libssh2.org
   1.81 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/lz4.org
   1.81 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/freetype.org
   2.19 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/cairographics.org
   2.72 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/just.systems
   2.72 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/google.com
   2.90 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libevent.org
   3.22 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libjpeg-turbo.org
   3.28 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libgit2.org
   3.54 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/libwebsockets.org
   4.98 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/curl.se
   5.29 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/pixman.org
   6.86 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/sqlite.org
   7.95 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/simplesystems.org
   9.67 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/direnv.net
  10.17 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/netlib.org
  11.46 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/rubygems.org
  12.19 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/freedesktop.org
  12.45 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/pcre.org
  12.64 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/openssl.org
  15.68 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/crates.io
  16.56 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/pip.pypa.io
  16.93 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/invisible-island.net
  25.92 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/charm.sh
  33.34 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/x.org
  38.96 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/postgresql.org
  41.36 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/tcl-lang.org
  46.06 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/cli.github.com
  46.43 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/git-scm.org
  54.68 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/gnome.org
  55.70 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/fly.io
  62.37 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/perl.org
  76.79 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/cmake.org
  86.27 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/deno.land
  87.87 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/nodejs.org
 107.57 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/pkgx.sh
 117.23 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/ruby-lang.org
 167.60 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/unicode.org
 181.69 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/facebook.com
 205.03 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/boost.org
 228.82 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/openinterpreter.com
 251.96 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/yarnpkg.com
 253.43 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/go.dev
 378.26 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/rust-lang.org
 475.14 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/gnu.org
 997.97 MB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/python.org
   1.79 GB /Users/jacob/.pkgx/github.com
   6.00 GB total

or clean it up with dua i ~/.pkgx.

[mxcl]

You can delete everything in ~/.pkgx at any time and nothing will break. It’s the beauty of pkgx anything you need will be re-downloaded when you need it.

So yes, it can be a lot of space, but not as much as nix by an order of magnitude and you can just wipe it all out whenever you want.