I am Ryan Lahfa, the primary release manager for NixOS 23.05 (āStoatā).
As we gear up for the upcoming release cycle of NixOS 23.05, I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you. Your contributions, dedication, and passion have been the driving force behind the success of this incredible operating system, and I am continually inspired by the collaborative spirit and unwavering commitment of this community.
With every release cycle, we have the opportunity to build upon the solid foundation of NixOS and make it even better. Whether itās fixing bugs, adding new NixOS modules, new major packages, upgrading them, improving performance overall or strengthening reliability, every contribution counts and plays a vital role in shaping NixOS.
So, letās have a great 23.05 release cycle! Iām excited to see what we can achieve together, and I have no doubt that this community will once again rise to the occasion and make this release cycle one to remember.
Again, thank you all for your hard work, dedication, and support.
With that announcement, Iād also like to publish the current release schedule which is on GitHub for editability. Since weāve got a few weeks until the major lifting begins, feel free to brainstorm any further ideas, improvements or even just comments or concerns in either this thread or on the GitHub issue.
The issue about the feature freeze period on GitHub is available here.
A release management room on the Matrix space is available where we are all reachable in one place.
I think this will best release yet with you at the helm, Iām confident it is in good hands. I hope it doesnāt effect your studies too much, this stuff takes a lot of time to get right and can be stressful which can negatively impact both peoples offline and online lives.
I also know you are a maintainer Arch as well, do you have a twin, youāve not told us about.
I have to do things like āsleepā these days, so no late night hacking session for me iām afraid no matter how much i like reproducible things.
The Stoat has a special meaning for me also, which i may reveal.
Can i suggest release after this to be ātyranocopterā nix.
Itās not breaking from the animal theme , i think dinosaurs are animals right, if not a little augmented.
Iām might even get of my lazy butt and try and release nix later in 2023.
Congratulations, i hope you can get all the support and help you need for non-trival task at hand. All the best.
During the Framework 16 Presentation they named Mint, Manjaro, Fedora and Ubuntu as āsupportedā Linux distributions. I hope by their late 2023 launch, NixOS will be enough of a tour-de-force that it could not be ignored.
Off the top of my head, and from the reviewers Iāve seen, the only thing thatās keeping us off the list is a package/distro update UI. The package install UI could even be done through Firefox, a-la Gnome Shell extensionsā¦ The best part is no part. In fact, a distro update could be done as a warning banner. Package updates could be done in an āalready installedā tab to Nix Packages. Youāve already built a package management UI in a big wayā¦ Itās just not integrated, yet. It could even have a button on the app drawer via a Firefox web link wrapper, a PWA, or Mozillaās version of electron (which could streamline development).
You may already know about it, but @vlinkz did work on that area through SnowflakeOS (https://snowflakeos.org/), a NixOS derivative for beginners with a UI for the package installs, reusing the GNOME UI.
(My significant other is using it on a vanilla NixOS more or less fine .)
I donāt think itās realistic but feel free to suggest ways to make the release process more compact, given the scale of nixpkgs and my own experience, I feel like 2 months are really needed.
If it helps and thereās demand, I can help model it with https://bpmn.io.
I mean, everyone can just do that on their own, but if any value there is in modeling, 50% emanates out of the discussion and mirroring in a conversation.
Just know: Iād be happy to help with this particular skill, if desired.
Ever since RFC 85 weāve been able to do on time releases.
I think a lot of credit for this goes to the awesome release managers, but there must be something to the framework @jonringer put in place. Iād be hesitant to change what seems to be working.
(āStoatā).
