"platforms.gnu" has been linux-only since at least 17.03:
$ nix eval -f channel:nixos-17.03 lib.platforms.gnu
[ "i686-linux" "x86_64-linux" "armv5tel-linux" "armv6l-linux" "armv7l-linux" "aarch64-linux" "mips64el-linux" ]
Unlike platforms.linux, platforms.gnu indicates "must use glibc"
which for the most part is not intended.
Replacing platforms.gnu with platforms.linux would be the same "today"
but let's err on preserving existing behavior and be optimistic
about platforms these packages work on.
(My OCD kicked in today...)
Remove repeated package names, capitalize first word, remove trailing
periods and move overlong descriptions to longDescription.
I also simplified some descriptions as well, when they were particularly
long or technical, often based on Arch Linux' package descriptions.
I've tried to stay away from generated expressions (and I think I
succeeded).
Some specifics worth mentioning:
* cron, has "Vixie Cron" in its description. The "Vixie" part is not
mentioned anywhere else. I kept it in a parenthesis at the end of the
description.
* ctags description started with "Exuberant Ctags ...", and the
"exuberant" part is not mentioned elsewhere. Kept it in a parenthesis
at the end of description.
* nix has the description "The Nix Deployment System". Since that
doesn't really say much what it is/does (especially after removing
the package name!), I changed that to "Powerful package manager that
makes package management reliable and reproducible" (borrowed from
nixos.org).
* Tons of "GNU Foo, Foo is a [the important bits]" descriptions
is changed to just [the important bits]. If the package name doesn't
contain GNU I don't think it's needed to say it in the description
either.
