finding number of nim packages can be confusing

[timotheecour]

reposting from nim-lang/Nim#7410 (comment) to here since this seems the right project.

This came up in timotheecour/D_vs_nim#3

for someone not very familiar with nim trying to figure out how many packages does nim have, things can be confusing:

https://nimble.directory/packages.xml shows only ~194 packages but https://github.com/nim-lang/packages shows ~640 packages

it's made worse by the fact that nim-lang/Nim#7400 still prevents someone browsing https://nim-lang.org/docs/lib.html from seeing packages, and the fact that https://nimble.directory/ doesn't show the total number of packages.

https://nimble.directory/packages.xml
shows:

<description>New and updated Nim packages</description>
    <link>https://nimble.directory/packages.xml</link>
    <lastBuildDate></lastBuildDate>
    <pubDate></pubDate>
    <ttl>3600</ttl>

but doesn't specify what it means by new and updated;

how about:

• specify total number of packages in https://nimble.directory/ (or maybe total + total new since ), eg as done in https://code.dlang.org/ which shows Displaying results 1 to 21 of 1250 packages found.

• change description in https://nimble.directory/packages.xml to show: New and updated Nim packages since <date>

[euantorano]

For future reference, Nimble pulls from https://github.com/nim-lang/packages and as such, that repository is the best place to get the count from. I think this pulls any packages created after the site, and any that have been searched/viewed by the site.

[FedericoCeratto]

https://nimble.directory/packages.xml is an RSS feed to announce the publication of new packages and it's not meant to list all existing packages.

[FedericoCeratto]

Added package count on /api/v1/package_count in 511d495