How to help testing huge PRs

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1

Hi everyone,

I would like to help testing the open PR for new Gnome 48: GNOME: 47 → 48.rc by jtojnar · Pull Request #386514 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub

Usually I would fire up my test VM and point to the branch:

nix flake update --override-input nixpkgs github:NixOS/nixpkgs/gnome

This then would try to compile ~1500 packages and fail almost always.

Is there a better way to test open PRs?

Thanks in advance
Thomas

2

if the build is failing due to oom.
you can try --jobs num and --cores num flags for nixos-rebuild or nix-cli command, to limit the cpu usage.
also try out zramSwap or a swap file or partition if not enough memory. (also checkout swapspace if going to use a dedicated swap partition)

3

There will be pre-built cached packages later in the development cycle, notice the Hydra jobset: TBD bullet point, so that’s gonna make things much easier.

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4

Thanks for the hints. I don’t mind compiling - There is enough RAM and disk space available. My problem is that the VM has newest unstable packages but the PR is behind master (does that really matter?):

This means basically everything needs to be compiled. I tried to remove as many unnecessary packages as possible (who needs a browser or a terminal anyways :D) but it is still a lot.

So all I can do is wait for Hydra providing pre-compiled packages?