Trying to sum it up: 1) This change in the behavior of `nimble develop` favors the more complex use case described by @zahary (multiple devs, multiple packages in development) over the simpler use cases described here by single developers. The latter now have to add `.develop` files and must probably take other actions to replicate the old behavior. A backwards-compatible solution would have been better IMHO.
2) Making a substantial change to Nims "native" package manager without a broad discussion is probably not good. My 2 cents (risking redundancy/falsehood because I don't fully know the discussion which lead to the change): I) The old and new behaviors of `develop` alike try to solve _two_ distinct problems: using a newly created package which is not yet in the package index (my typical use case) and using a package which already is in the package index, but from a different directory. If both are needed, they should probably be implemented separately. II) A backwards-compatible solution could be based on a hierarchy of `.pkgs` directories instead of the inclusion hierarchy of `.develop` files described by @zahary. More specific `.pkgs` directories could link unchanged packages back to the higher level, while containing the usual directories for the changed packages.
