I was using that kernel for one of my profiles and now it’s unsupported. Is it planned to support this kernel again? What was the issue with it? If I were to maintain it in nixpkgs what should I do?
You can read the reasoning for the removal here. I don’t think it’s likely it will be accepted again, considering the lack of maintenance the previous time.
If someone signs up to properly maintain it, i.e. fixing it on every kernel update, then probably yes.
I mean, the removal specifically says:
Also, to be clear upfront: the only future this should have is maintenance in a downstream-project by somebody caring enough. To me, a re-add is out of question since it’d contradict the “no new downstream kernel rule”.
Authority is limited, of course, but I think it’s a reasonable argument.
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It is a reasonable argument but in practice the downstream project needs to build the kernel and provide a separate binary cache only for the kernel to be usable. If I can get it into the nix community cachix cache then sure that works, but at the same time I’d like to be able to use a libre kernel on nixos without relying on anything else.
If it’s gonna be a philosophical debate about whether or not the libre kernel belongs in nixpkgs I’d rather maintain a downstream project and use the community cache. In my opinion it was better to have a sometimes working libre kernel in nixpkgs than to not have it at all. That’s what nix is about, right? Being able to reproduce a system even it if means a slightly older one and then when it works again you can update.
EDIT:
Come to think of it, I think the community would benefit from a downstream project providing various kernel configs with a cache. linux-libre, linux-rt etc.
There are very regular demands for the cachyos kernel, I’d argue that that one would make more sense to upstream into nixpkgs if more downstream kernels were taken up, simply because it’d have more users while being a similar amount of additional maintenance burden.
I think - as the removal comment says - maintaining downstream projects for niche kernel maintenance makes more sense given that more kernel maintenance is currently explicitly not desired. Even more so with the current wave of CVEs.
The latter part is not really what nix is about. The builds should always be reproducible, yes, but the fact that nixpkgs cannot ensure all packages always build is a problem that results from its scale, not a feature.
Personally I’d honestly like to see a lot more package removals than additions, nixpkgs as it stands is a supply chain catastrophe waiting to happen.
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The Linux kernel team has a policy of not accepting downstream kernels anymore. So the answer for the time being will likely be no.
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It’s also a security-critical package, so it would need a committer interested in maintaining it so that updates get handled in a timely manner, not just regular community interest.
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I’m just gonna use guix and ask AI to write the missing config for me.