Hi,
I need to update efivar to account for a bug, 1773175 – Could not parse device path: Invalid argument , (I will also need to update efibootmgr since they compile together or neither). Both have very old releases on github.
Is it alright to go from a stable release to a ‘git’ version?
I’ve compiled locally and things work for me.
I guess it isn’t very uncommon for distributions to pick various patches
of some upstream software to fix device compatibility bugs. In your case
I would see if you can just pick a single patch that fixes the issues
and applied that to our versions of the packages.
If the difference between last release we are using and the latest
commit on the upstream repo is sufficiently small that should work as
well but probably less preferable.
Make sure to comment with a link to the appropriate upstream issues when
you submit a PR for these kinds of changes. If the patch fails to apply
on a future upgrade we should be able to tell if we can safely drop it.
I think its also good open source etiquette to let upstream know we’re doing that. That means opening a ticket saying “Hey, I noticed there are some issues with the latest stable release. Is a new release planned in the near future? For now our distribution NixOS will use commit xyz instead of a stable release to cover those issues”.
That gives upstream some feedback (its easy to forget releases in day-to-day development) and also gives them the opportunity to tell you “no, our master branch really is not fit for production use and you should not do that”.
Good point, I submitted this- Upcoming release, in light of the "Could not parse device path: Invalid argument" bug? · Issue #151 · rhboot/efivar · GitHub . Will wait before going by @andir’s solution.