[Meta] Package request issue template missing (?)

[BlastboomStrice]

I thought about creating a package request issue, but while I see older issues (apparently) following a template (like this one #400124), this kind of template seems to be missing from the template list.

Am I getting something wrong? Was there a change the last week?

[DrTeagle]

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[jopejoe1]

We removed the template in #391926 as those issues where mostly ignored and or lead to packages that did not get enough maintenance attention of the maintainer adding it just to close the issue.

[SigmaSquadron]

In order to mitigate the unsustainable growth of unmaintained packages, Nixpkgs is no longer using package requests to coordinate new package additions. This change has the benefit of decreasing future maintainer burden on the long term, and was implemented after several contributors reached a consensus.

That said, we encourage you to contribute any packages you want to see in Nixpkgs yourself - should you need any help during packaging, feel free to reach out on Matrix or Discourse. You are also welcome to open custom Tracking issues if you would like the assistance of other volunteers in packaging a software ecosystem.

[7c6f434c]

For a package to be maintained well, it's very useful to have a person who is both a user of the package and a code contributor to Nixpkgs (so that the issues with the package is directly issues with the setup of a person qualified to do something about that).

In other words, Nixpkgs works well as an exchange of solutions to problems people have, and does not work as well as a collection of drive-by solutions to problems of users who have no persistent relationship to the contributors.

Package requests have been observed to lead to package additions where no code contributor to Nixpkgs uses the packages added…