[RFC] Smarter package management

[Jint-lzxy]

Feature description

As briefly discussed in #1252, there are several cases where Mason is simply dead and can't be used at all. My specific situation is that most of the pre-built binaries can't run on FreeBSD (of course), and Linux-emulation mode doesn't really help either. I need to constantly symlink the "correct" executables to Mason's bin directory to make things work, but that's laborious, and I really don't wanna do that anymore. imo we need a way to either bypass Mason completely or make it optional for OSs like NixOS and the BSDs.

Additional information

No response

[vollowx]

The LSP servers, linters and formatters can actually be installed in system-wide on most systems, which means they are executable everywhere and maybe we just don't need mason at all?

[Jint-lzxy]

The LSP servers, linters and formatters can actually be installed in system-wide on most systems, which means they are executable everywhere and maybe we just don't need mason at all?

Exactly! Initially, I was thinking of completely removing Mason, but without it, we'd lose the ability to automatically install those dependencies on a freshly installed system, which is kinda like the two sides of the same coin lol

[vollowx]

Maybe ask user whether to install stuffs manually or by mason, store the choice and enable mason if that is true ?

[Jint-lzxy]

Maybe ask user whether to install stuffs manually or by mason, store the choice and enable mason if that is true?

Yeah that's what I meant by "optional," but ideally, I'd like to find a way to automatically bypass Mason without any user interaction. In my case, I'd love Mason to be available on my Mac, but to be automatically disabled on my FreeBSD workstation. Especially in jails when I'm doing certain experimentation, I certainly don't wanna specify that option manually lmao

[charliie-dev]

In my case, I'd love Mason to be available on my Mac, but to be automatically disabled on my FreeBSD workstation.

Maybe we can add an option as "platform" in our custom lazy.nvim loader and utilized the enabled flag in lazy.nvim?
If platform = {"XXX OS" = false} is not set, then it will default to install the plugin on whatever OS it's on.
I personally would like to disable sniprun on windows since it could not be installed on windows lol

https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim?tab=readme-ov-file#-plugin-spec

[Jint-lzxy]

Maybe we can add an option as "platform" in our custom lazy.nvim loader and utilized the enabled flag in lazy.nvim? If platform = {"XXX OS" = false} is not set, then it will default to install the plugin on whatever OS it's on. I personally would like to disable sniprun on windows since it could not be installed on windows lol

lol that's a great idea! Tho we'll need a way to automatically register those sources with lspconfig/none-ls/dap then.

[Jint-lzxy]

After some consideration, I've decided to create a plugin that automates the control of those "bridging plugins" (like mason-null-ls.nvim). I'll share the link to the Reddit post here once it's completed lol

[hiSandog]

One split that may keep this manageable is to separate "tool discovery" from "tool installation". Mason could remain one installer backend, while the runtime resolver first checks explicit user paths/system executables and only falls back to Mason-managed binaries when enabled. That would make FreeBSD/NixOS/BSD setups first-class without removing the fresh-install convenience for users who want Mason to bootstrap everything.

[charliie-dev]

@hiSandog i just make a PR to support this, u can check it if u feel like to