Package updates in 20.03 and stable channels

[danieldk]

@silviogutierrez

Note that 20.03 was released months after the Google SDK was updated in unstable, so I’m not sure why the release didn’t “capture” these updates. Or why some packages get updated after the release and others don’t (when unstable updates all).

The next release is branched off unstable (or master) a while before the actual release to have some time to fix packages that do not build. E.g. 20.03 was branched early February although it was not released until April:

NixOS 20.03 Feature Freeze

Hey everyone Samuel Leathers (@disassembler) and I are super pleased to be your release managers for the forthcoming release of NixOS 20.03 Markhor, and as such we get to announce to you that it’s our intention to have feature freeze and branch off on February 10th . So many great improvements have already landed into master or are in progress: Python NixOS Testing Driver (nixos/tests: Leftover tasks towards unified Python integration tests · Issue #72828 · NixOS/nixpkgs · Git…

So, a release starts with the versions of unstable at the time of the branch + updates made during the freeze to fix packages + security updates. After the release, updates on a release branch are primarily to fix security issues and/or fix higher-impact bugs/issues (typically things that bother people that put in the time to do a PR and do not have a large impact). When it comes to security issues, sometimes they are fixed by updating to a newer version of a package, sometimes a patch is applied to the existing version.

I don’t know why the GitHub CLI was bumped specifically. Either it addressed a security update, or it was a low-impact version bump that someone wanted or needed and did a PR for.