Release process: staging branches?

Development
1

I read NixOS 23.11 manual | Nix & NixOS, but it doesn’t mention the staging, staging-next and staging-<release> branches.

I understand that some branches match channels e.g.:

  • nixos-unstable channel = master branch
  • nixos-19.03 channel = release-19.03 branch

What’s the point of the staging.* branches? From what I see, staging-next is merged into staging and then into master.
But PRs have different targets. What would make a specific change go into staging and not directly into master?

5 Likes
2

It’s actually the other way around. PRs that require many rebuilds get merged into staging. Every once in a while, the current staging gets forked off into staging-next. The purpose of staging-next is to let the current rebuild finish, detect regressions, stabilize. staging-next is then merged into master. See https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/26 for details.

7 Likes
3

Have a look at staging workflow by vcunat · Pull Request #26 · NixOS/rfcs · GitHub for an explanation.

4 Likes
4

Thanks for explaining and linking to the RFC. :slight_smile:

5

Thanks for this RFC link, but it didn’t tell how the unstable branch is produced, any more informantion about that?

6

Here’s info on how channels update (and the corresponding branches like nixos-unstable): Nix channels - NixOS Wiki

1 Like