Just thinking out loud, I usually just keep checking https://nixpk.gs manually.
Is there a tool or service for this that I’m not aware of? Do you think it would be a good idea to have some automation that comments on PRs when their commits are included in nixos-unstable?
This way there’s no need to host a dedicated notification system (which could be non-trivial given the potential traffic), since people subscribed to the PR would automatically get notified through GitHub’s existing notification mechanism.
It could also be opt-in initially, you’d just comment something like @bot track and it would only work for that specific PR.
My favorite method is to use @maralorn s @nixpkgs-bot:maralorn.de, a matrix bot that pings you if a PR you follow, or a pr by a user you follow reaches a new channel.
It’s response to help:
Hey! I am the friendly nixpkgs-bot and I am here to help you notice when pull requests are being merged, so you don‘t need to hammer refresh on github.
I am continously watching the nixpkgs git repository on github. If you want to be notified whenever a PR reaches one of the relevant branches in the nixpkgs release cycle, you can tell me via the following commands:
subscribe [pr-number]: I will subscribe you to the given pull request.
unsubscribe [pr-number]: I will unsubscribe you from the given pull request.
subscribe user [github-login-name]: I will subscribe you to all newly merged pull requests created by the given github handle.
unsubscribe user [github-login-name]: I will not subscribe you to newly merged pull requests from the given user anymore.
list: I will show you all the pull requests, I am watching for you.
help: So I can tell you all of this again.
By the way, you don‘t need to type the whole command, for every keyword in the command any prefix will work. e.g. s u for subscribe user
I will inform you, when one of the pull requests you subscribed to reaches one of these branches: haskell-updates, master, nixos-24.11, nixos-24.11-small, nixos-25.05, nixos-25.05-small, nixos-unstable, nixos-unstable-small, nixpkgs-unstable, release-24.11, release-25.05, staging, staging-24.11, staging-25.05, staging-next, staging-next-24.11, staging-next-25.05
I have been programmed and am being hosted by maralorn. Feel free to reach out to him, if you have any problems or suggestions.
My code is written in Haskell, is open source under the AGPL license and can be found at code.maralorn.de/maralorn/config/src/branch/main/packages/nixpkgs-bot.
