Today I noticed my nixos-unstable channel wasn’t updated in a month or so. I’m also seeing here - https://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixos/trunk-combined/tested that there are many errors for this channel and that the last successful evalutation is the same as the current nixos I have in my system.
Is this related to https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/83249 ?
But it says there’s a “Build Problem”.
That’s what’s blocking it from updating now.
I think it’s still true that the last successful update was 9 days ago, as the website says, not a month ago.
Can you give more details about what versions you see on your system and on Hydra?
This page:
https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable
says that the git commit is ae6bdcc5358 which is from March 28th.
OK than I think the Corona virus has ruined my sense of time 
. You are all right - it wasn’t updated since the 28th of March which is 9 days ago, I’ve edited the thread’s title. But that’s still quiet some time no? Seems out of the ordinary to me.
There has been several issues that prevented evaluation, notably https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/83647.
The aarch64 builders were also timing out due to I/O starvation – that should be fixed now as well.
Hopefully, Hydra - Build 116168962 of job nixos:trunk-combined:tested or Hydra - Build 116295167 of job nixos:trunk-combined:tested will succeed now.
But isn’t that a problem? Currently Firefox has critical bugs in version 74 and they are not fixed!
While obviously unfortunate, on nixos-unstable this is expected to happen every once in a while. It was discussed recently in Unstable channel still being blocked - #2 by raboof - if you want to update firefox to the version from nixpkgs master you could use the approach I just linked to from Nix channels - NixOS Wiki
That’s exactly what I followed - I switched to nixos-unstable-small. Thanks @raboof for documenting that.
I’m on the “nixos-stable” channel. The updates should be available as soon as possible! Am I completely wrong?
And to “nixos-unstable-small”: I cannot compile large packages on my machine. For example: chromium takes over 16 hours!
I think you may be interested in https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/82443 Just noticed you already commented there 
. For me on nixos-unstable-small I didn’t need to build Firefox from source (lucky me).
Do you mean nixos-19.09? That was merged (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/84251) and indeed I see it on the channel - perhaps you need to update the channel?
When I got firefox from unstable, at d266ad7d2c13173d6e707350808787e8b96b6170, I think I could download all resources from the cache and didn’t have to compile anything.
The point is that small channels only wait for a small subset packages, so it may happen you need to build some yourself.
“nixos-1909” or “nixos-2003”. Merged does not mean that the package is already available, right? Only Firefox 74.0 is visible here [1] and my nix-channel is up to date.
Correct, but I checked the tag from https://status.nixos.org/ (which is consistent with the branch at https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/tree/nixos-19.09, e10c65cdb35b), and that also includes the update.
Hmm, that actually shows 74.0.1 for me.
Courtsey of @grahamc 's history page- here are all the gaps (in days) for 19.09:
25.847195
6.9950137
6.868398
4.8804593
3.880298
3.4390352
3.406348
3.2822022
2.9142659
2.5869575
2.4683518
2.2828486
2.1588988
2.1526892
2.0495844
2.0112188
2.0
1.9828601
1.9730494
1.9694829
1.9478185
1.9307017
1.9241574
1.894483
1.833945
1.6724145
1.6351223
1.6083102
1.5470107
1.5323176
1.4841412
1.4181556
1.3611842
1.3508195
1.2605724
1.2387927
1.2156509
1.2116344
1.1904432
1.1802055
1.1457179
1.1365882
1.1191136
1.0989381
1.0944599
1.088204
1.0612534
1.0597299
1.0483495
1.0403278
1.0315905
1.0309788
1.0283126
1.0261889
1.0214797
0.9985111
0.9937096
0.9902008
0.9826293
0.9804594
0.9556556
0.9547784
0.95073867
0.94478303
0.9327216
0.9221722
0.9112304
0.89643353
0.8850069
0.86969066
0.86559325
0.86238456
0.86083794
0.8595568
0.8474838
0.8220337
0.8148661
0.7940674
0.7821907
0.7647045
0.7575831
0.7574215
0.7566251
0.7511427
0.7494229
0.7340951
0.7308749
0.72861266
0.7220683
0.70250463
0.69795704
0.695337
0.6899354
0.68748844
0.6743421
0.66234994
0.62243766
0.62113345
0.6207641
0.6189866
0.61787856
0.60989153
0.6078486
0.6006579
0.6000577
0.59968835
0.58902353
0.58797324
0.5852955
0.5792475
0.5726108
0.56947136
0.5690212
0.56884813
0.5674977
0.5657664
0.5504848
0.5494229
0.5422207
0.53868884
0.5308403
0.523892
0.5169437
0.5118767
0.50866807
0.5041897
0.49578717
0.4888735
0.48744228
0.4873846
0.48681903
0.4866805
0.48487997
0.47943214
0.47699678
0.47560018
0.47358033
0.4682364
0.46420822
0.46416205
0.46036473
0.4599954
0.4588989
0.4579986
0.45676363
0.44860342
0.4477147
0.43805403
0.4338989
0.43213296
0.4292359
0.42908588
0.42853186
0.42408818
0.42226455
0.41262695
0.4108264
0.40954524
0.40363574
0.401789
0.40094644
0.399723
0.3974146
0.39561403
0.3933518
0.39237073
0.38239843
0.38219067
0.38213298
0.3803555
0.37974375
0.37958217
0.3775623
0.3768698
0.37641966
0.37284166
0.37262234
0.36929825
0.36919436
0.36824793
0.3667821
0.36195752
0.36056095
0.35477838
0.354536
0.3513158
0.3483264
0.3474723
0.34339797
0.34243998
0.3415166
0.34020084
0.3381002
0.3348338
0.33393353
0.33109418
0.3296168
0.32824332
0.3276893
0.32566944
0.3246768
0.32386887
0.322807
0.32264543
0.32106417
0.31548938
0.3133772
0.31326178
0.30960295
0.30784857
0.3075254
0.30300093
0.2965143
0.29575253
0.29411358
0.28549168
0.2793398
0.27906278
0.27740073
0.27712372
0.27656972
0.2762927
0.27221838
0.27083334
0.2693675
0.26746306
0.26221144
0.25970683
0.2559326
0.25502077
0.25229686
0.25116575
0.24861495
0.2440674
0.24374422
0.24366343
0.24201293
0.23947369
0.23820406
0.23386426
0.23299861
0.23072484
0.22913204
0.22777009
0.22729686
0.22693905
0.22352262
0.22300324
0.21949446
0.21939059
0.21750924
0.21734765
0.21326177
0.21174976
0.21061864
0.20781395
0.20663665
0.20647506
0.20393583
0.20373961
0.201789
0.20148893
0.20036934
0.20020775
0.19953832
0.19801478
0.19541782
0.19463296
0.19254386
0.1915397
0.1901662
0.18700369
0.18524931
0.18352954
0.18201755
0.17928208
0.17780471
0.17539243
0.17515005
0.175
0.17468837
0.17333795
0.16713989
0.16647045
0.1611265
0.15918744
0.15861034
0.15618652
0.15575947
0.15475531
0.15391274
0.15235457
0.1521699
0.15156971
0.15019621
0.14915743
0.1476108
0.14701062
0.14571792
0.14497922
0.13915052
0.13826178
0.13674977
0.13659972
0.13657664
0.13582641
0.13187905
0.12909742
0.12639658
0.12546168
0.12456141
0.12453832
0.12315328
0.12044091
0.11949446
0.116228074
0.114265926
0.11382733
0.11381579
0.1131579
0.11193444
0.10926823
0.10771006
0.105759464
0.105401665
0.10484765
0.10448984
0.10371653
0.1002193
0.10012696
0.098891966
0.09885734
0.09882271
0.096352726
0.09626039
0.0924169
0.092382275
0.091989845
0.09171283
0.09147045
0.09142429
0.091204986
0.09112419
0.08896583
0.08888504
0.08814635
0.088054016
0.086888276
0.08659972
0.086057246
0.08582641
0.084845334
0.08297553
0.082906276
0.08261773
0.08214451
0.08189058
0.080551706
0.079374425
0.07523084
0.074803784
0.07452678
0.07254155
0.07237996
0.071687445
0.07033703
0.0696445
0.068940446
0.06860573
0.068097875
0.06740536
0.06621653
0.064762235
0.064750694
0.06471606
0.06449677
0.06385042
0.06363112
0.063573405
0.062996306
0.060941827
0.06073407
0.059949216
0.059822254
0.057525393
0.053381808
0.05316251
0.052793168
0.052296862
0.05056556
0.049688365
0.049515236
0.049145892
0.048487995
0.04833795
0.047229916
0.046687443
0.04413666
0.043928903
0.042116806
0.040743306
0.038711913
0.038619574
0.038400277
0.03743075
0.0367036
0.03663435
0.03618421
0.032433055
0.031671282
0.031128809
0.03039012
0.03021699
0.028693445
0.027885504
0.027562328
0.02592336
0.025150046
0.024930747
0.024503693
0.0238458
0.022899354
0.021929825
0.02121422
0.01960988
0.019413665
0.019113574
0.018905817
0.01720914
0.016724376
0.015570176
0.015235457
0.013942752
0.0138735
0.011853647
0.01174977
0.011645891
0.011634349
0.010560942
0.009983841
0.008264082
0.008229455
0.007871653
0.006255771
0.006082641
0.0059672208
0.0047091413
0.0038896583
0.0036703602
0.003578024
0.0029547552
0.0028047091
2.5392429E-4
1.0387812E-4
scala.io.Source.fromURL( "https://channels.nix.gsc.io/nixos-19.09-small/history" ).mkString.split( "\n" ).map( _.split( " " )(1 ).toInt ).sorted.toSeq.map( x => x.toInt ).sliding(2).map{ case Seq(x, y, _*) => y-x }.toList.map( _ / 86640.toFloat ).sortWith( (x,y) => x > y )
You are right! “Ctrl + Shift + R” didn’t help. I had to clear the cache manually (Firefox)!
I have now double checked it again including “nix-channel --update” and “nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade”. I do not know why but the update is now available.
I am out. I thought I understood NixOS and the concept a bit but I guess not…
master and release-* are base branches that are periodically evaluated by Hydra. When the evaluation succeeds, we say the channel advanced and corresponding nixos-* branch is bumped. That means every channel dependency will have been built.
Previously you could track them in https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels repo but now they are in the main nixpkgs repo as well.
status.nixos.org has that too (click Grafana in the header):