Questions regarding `passthru.updateScript`

Development
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So there’s zoom-us which is a proprietary software I have to use. It updates frequently lately and it seems that if you use an outdated version it may segfault unexpectedly. It has a passthru.updateScript. Unfortunately, although individuals update it via normal PRs, these PRs can take a long time to be merge while the program becomes almost nonfunctional on that period.

I’ve always hoped, that the fact there’s a good updateScript to this package, it will speed up the delivery of updates, but I’m not sure because I don’t know for example: Who runs nix-shell maintainers/scripts/update.nix? Is there a cronjob for that? Do unfree programs are updated like that as well?

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I believe the updates are all run manually except for the ones that @ryantm’s bot handles but no matter, it is going to take time before changes make their way into a channel.

If I were you, I would use a local checkout and then run the update scripts against that when needed and then build against that checkout.

Or of course, in the case of zoom, just use your browser.

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Yeah, the update scripts are there primarily for maintainers’ convenience, each maintainer is responsible for updating their own packages – though, nixpkgs-update will be eventually able to run them as well: Make rewriter for passthru.updateScript · Issue #182 · ryantm/nixpkgs-update · GitHub

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