Cross-OS stable package channel?

Development
1

I’d like to propose two new stable channels, with the goal of providing a single stable channel that projects can pin nixpkgs to in order to function reliably for all users.

  1. nixpkgs-18.03: This channel would build and test packages for both Linux and Darwin. This channel would be suitable for acquiring packages for use on both OSes, but it would not necessarily pass the NixOS tests, and so would not be reliable to deploy NixOS from.
  2. nixpkgs-18.03-all: This channel would be just like nixpkgs-18.03, except that it would also pass the NixOS tests. This channel would be suitable for all purposes.

The addition of these differs from the current situation by allowing a project to rely on a single checkout to support both Linux and Darwin users / developers. Currently there is no stable channel a project can follow and be sure that it pass both Linux and Darwin tests. It’s important that a channel like this be stable so that organizations can rely on it for bug fixes and security updates without having to worry about frequent major dependency updates.

3 Likes
2

Maybe we can give distinctive names to all these distributions. If I read nixpkgs-18.03 it’s not immediately clear what is included in it.

I would also be good to have them all under the same project in hydra because right now they are scattered all around and the named don’t map 1:1 with the channel names.

2 Likes
3

I have no opinion about the names of the stable channels, but it would be a big win for the Nix community to have these.

4

Jonas, do you have name suggestions for the channels/branches?

5

It would be helpful to enumerate what all the existing channels are named and what tests they depend on.

Does the nixos-18.03 not depend on the Linux and Darwin tests passing currently?

6

I was under the impression that the nixos channels did not test Darwin builds.