Let's have a great 23.05 🦦 release cycle!

[RaitoBezarius]

Dear NixOS community,

I am Ryan Lahfa, the primary release manager for NixOS 23.05 (“Stoat”).

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 it’s 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, let’s have a great 23.05 release cycle! I’m 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, I’d also like to publish the current release schedule which is on GitHub for editability. Since we’ve 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.

Here’s my public personal calendar for this release cycle: https://kumo.lahfa.xyz/apps/calendar/p/fTRC5WaYGzd3yQaz – it will be improved with proper metadata as we move forward into this release cycle.

Summary:

• Current release schedule issue: 🦦 NixOS 23.05 — Release Schedule · Issue #223562 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub
• Feature freeze announcement: 🦦 NixOS 23.05 — Feature Freeze & Release Blockers · Issue #224457 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub
• Release Management matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#nixos-release-management:nixos.org
• Personal public calendar for this release cycle: Ryan Lahfa's private cloud

[nixinator]

I think this will best release yet with you at the helm, I’m confident it is in good hands. I hope it doesn’t 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, you’ve not told us about.

I have to do things like ‘sleep’ these days, so no late night hacking session for me i’m 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 ‘tyranocopter’ nix.

It’s not breaking from the animal theme , i think dinosaurs are animals right, if not a little augmented.

I’m 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.

[drupol]

Let 23.05 be the best release ever, thanks for what you’re doing and good luck!

[Nix]

During the Framework 16 Presentation they named Mint, Manjaro, Fedora and Ubuntu as “supported” 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 I’ve seen, the only thing that’s 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 extensions… 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 “already installed” tab to Nix Packages. You’ve already built a package management UI in a big way… It’s just not integrated, yet. It could even have a button on the app drawer via a Firefox web link wrapper, a PWA, or Mozilla’s version of electron (which could streamline development).

Congrats on the 23.05 launch

[RaitoBezarius]

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 .)

[RaitoBezarius]

PSA: Breaking changes except for desktop environments are disallowed now.

[miniBill]

Looking forward to this

[RaitoBezarius]

23.05 beta is out since the 22th May, ZHF is still ongoing and we will wrap it up soon on the 31th May for the final release.

[NorfairKing]

Just a suggestion: Can we call it 23.06 if it will be released (best-case) at the end of 23.05 ?

[Kranzes]

It’s too late now probably

[RaitoBezarius]

We always do that though and it’s really the May release as the release process gets really heavy in May.

[vcunat]

Most of the stuff have “May versions”, too. (Just look at the freezing/restricting schedule, etc.)

[NorfairKing]

We always do that though and it’s really the May release as the release process gets really heavy in May.

Great, but then let’s do the release process in April instead.

[RaitoBezarius]

@NorfairKing

Great, but then let’s do the release process in April instead.

It also starts in April — please read the release schedule!

[vcunat]

You can’t do the process in April and get packages from May.

[NorfairKing]

It also starts in April — please read the release schedule!

I have. I mean let’s finish it by the end of April instead of by the end of May.

[RaitoBezarius]

@NorfairKing

I have. I mean let’s finish it by the end of April instead of by the end of May.

I don’t think it’s 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.

[blaggacao]

If it helps and there’s 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: I’d be happy to help with this particular skill, if desired.

[ryantm]

Ever since RFC 85 we’ve been able to do on time releases.

NixOS/rfcs/blob/02458c2ecc9f915b143b1923213b40be8ac02a96/rfcs/0085-nixos-release-stablization.md

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. I’d be hesitant to change what seems to be working.

[NorfairKing]

@RaitoBezarius

I don’t think it’s 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.

I’m not saying use less time. I’m saying start a month earlier.