Best way to not recompile linux-rpi

[eblechschmidt]

Did you take a look at recent posts?

NixOS 26.05 raspberry pi 4 kernel cache missing?

After upgrade from 25.11 to 26.05, no matter I use kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxKernel.packages.linux_rpi4; from nixpkgs or inputs.nixos-hardware.nixosModules.raspberry-pi-4 from nixos-hardware, the kernel linux-rpi-6.12.75-1+rpt have to compile itself, and now it is over 12 hours and still going… Am I doing something wrong? It did not happen in the previous release such as 25.11 and 25.05.

Compiling rpi4 kernel in on x86_64 nixos-hardware slow

As in it takes many hours, and there doesn’t appear to be any cached build available. Any better options? It is slow because it wants to build via emulator. So I guess in theory setting up a cross build would be faster. But my attempts to cross build the rpi4 kernel have been failures so far. As in it typically wants to cross compile all the build tools too, and that ends being very slow and failing. It use to be the rpi4 kernel was available in nixpkgs, and cached, but I think this is no lon…