Making devenv start fast, and the whole nixpkgs with it
Summary
This post analyzes why devenv startup time and the loader’s work with nixpkgs are so costly, and surveys multiple approaches to fix the stat storm. It walks through the tradeoffs of absolute paths, RUNPATH symlink farms, ELF notes, per-package ld.so caches, and even static linking, ultimately detailing the final approach using an ELF note cache patch and ongoing work to propagate it across nixpkgs. The piece combines theory, experimentation, and pragmatic engineering decisions relevant to dev environments and packaging ecosystems.