# Fetching repository source tarballs from the Nest w/o pijul installed

**URL:** <https://discourse.pijul.org/t/fetching-repository-source-tarballs-from-the-nest-w-o-pijul-installed/943>\
**Category:** Question\
**Created:** [August 3, 2022, 11:23am UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/fetching-repository-source-tarballs-from-the-nest-w-o-pijul-installed/943 "2022-08-03T11:23:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![laumann](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/discourse.pijul.org/laumann/32/8_2.png) [@laumann](https://discourse.pijul.org/u/laumann)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2022, 11:23am UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/fetching-repository-source-tarballs-from-the-nest-w-o-pijul-installed/943/1 "2022-08-03T11:23:26Z")

</div>

Hi all! Long time no see!

I was wondering if there is a way to obtain the pijul sources without pijul? Like from github or sourcehut you can fetch tarballs over http, and i think a similar mechanism might be useful for the nest.

I’m not aware of any prior discussions around this, so thought I’d start this one.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pmeunier](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/discourse.pijul.org/pmeunier/32/4_2.png) [@pmeunier](https://discourse.pijul.org/u/pmeunier)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2022, 12:37pm UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/fetching-repository-source-tarballs-from-the-nest-w-o-pijul-installed/943/2 "2022-08-03T12:37:41Z")

</div>

Hi! welcome back. You can obtain them from Cargo. Since you need Rust to compile it anyway, you’re likely to have Cargo installed. If not, the tarballs are still accessible (I used to know the links from memory when I was actively involved in the ancestor of `crate2nix`, but I don’t anymore).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joyously](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/discourse.pijul.org/joyously/32/266_2.png) [@joyously](https://discourse.pijul.org/u/joyously)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2022, 2:09pm UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/fetching-repository-source-tarballs-from-the-nest-w-o-pijul-installed/943/3 "2022-08-03T14:09:08Z")

</div>

That’s fine for pijul itself, but what about other repositories on the Nest?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![laumann](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/discourse.pijul.org/laumann/32/8_2.png) [@laumann](https://discourse.pijul.org/u/laumann)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2022, 7:51pm UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/fetching-repository-source-tarballs-from-the-nest-w-o-pijul-installed/943/4 "2022-08-03T19:51:04Z")

</div>

Thanks @joyously I think that’s a good clarification of what I meant by my question.

My thinking was that I would expect to have a way to obtain the sources of a given repository on [nest.pijul.org](http://nest.pijul.org) without necessarily having pijul installed.

I’ll come clean on my intentions here (instead of [X-Y probleming](https://xyproblem.info/) you): I’m trying to create an ebuild to allow installing Pijul via Gentoo’s package manager (built from source!). Broadly, the approach for Rust packages is to list all the dependencies, have Portage (the package manager) download them all (from [crates.io](http://crates.io)) and put them in a “local” registry so the actual compilation/installation can proceed offline.

The approach I’ve been trying out is to then also list pijul itself in the dependency list, then copy that source folder into the work folder and proceed from there.

All that being said, I _would_ like for the nest to have an “archive” fetching function that simply puts together a tarball of the source at a given point (channel?) or tag. Like github, gitlab, sourcehut and so many other source forges. Would that be a feature to consider for the Nest?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![laumann](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/discourse.pijul.org/laumann/32/8_2.png) [@laumann](https://discourse.pijul.org/u/laumann)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2022, 7:52pm UTC](https://discourse.pijul.org/t/fetching-repository-source-tarballs-from-the-nest-w-o-pijul-installed/943/5 "2022-08-03T19:52:22Z")

</div>

Just edited the title to clarify what I was really looking for…