Outdated package version questions - Maven in this case

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1

Hi,

I am somewhat new to the Nix ecosystem and I have a few questions regarding the topic, so please bear with me.

In 23.05 the Maven version is 3.8.6 which is quite outdated, (released on 2022-06-06).

1. Shouldn’t Nixpkgs be updated more often than this in general? There has been quite a few version updates of Maven since then.

If yes:
2. What is the proper way to ask the maintainer to update it? Shall I just open an issue in Github like this?

Now I see that the unstable branch has the latest Maven release which is 3.9.5. So that’s cool.
3. Should I just try to use the version from unstable if I need it?

And finally, I can see that there is no 23.11 branch yet.
4. Am I correct to assume that the 23.11 will be branched off from master, so it will include the newest version of Maven in a few weeks?

Thanks in advance!

2

  1. We try to keep versions stable on the release branch. Small bugfixes and security are ok, majot updates always go to unstable

  2. Yes, opening an issue is a proper way to request updates, but mind that these will probably not be backported to the stable branch.

  3. Yes, use the version from unstable. Selecting Nixpkgs branches on a per project basis is actually one of the benefits of using Nix.

  4. 23.11 will be branched off towards the of the month, so will get the new Maven version in 23.11

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Thank you for the quick answer, cheers!