I don’t have the time/energy to write a larger response for now, but I’ve recently gotten to the conclusion that the fundamental problem with Nixpkgs’ PR backlog is that the number of packages grows quicker than the number of committers.
And imo the best way to fix this is automation, more automation, and even more automation! This should happen from two sides:
- Tree-wide architecture and changes: This is what I’ve been going for with RFC 140 and the shepherding/co-authoring of RFC 101, both of which should relieve some burden on committers over the long term with tree-wide changes and CI going forward
- Per-package work: Make packages maintainers truly responsible for maintaining their packages (duh!). This should mean: Getting notified for build failures, responding to issues, apply tree-wide improvements to your package, etc. Concretely this could be implemented with a weekly/monthly email summalising any actions that need to be done for the package. And if somebody isn’t doing these, the package should get removed or get new maintainers. And all of this should be done automatically.