Speeding up VS Code updates merging?

Development
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Hey, I’ve noticed that a trivial bump of VS Code to the next version is been sitting there for a week: vscode: 1.51.1 -> 1.52.1 by samuela · Pull Request #107076 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub.

I am a bit surprised at this: clearly, VS Code is used by a lot of NixOs developers, so I’d expect this to be one of the better maintained packages.

Is there any way to improve the process here?

On my side, I’ve installed the PR manually locally and checked that it works on NixOS, but I can’t merge it.

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Hey @matklad! I’m the author of that PR. I created GitHub - samuela/nixpkgs-upkeep: Auto-updates and CI 🤖 for Nixpkgs for exactly this reason, but I’m not a maintainer of the project in nixpkgs so I’m not able to merge the changes automatically.

One idea brought up here is the possibility of tagging maintainers in order to move the process along. It’s also a bit surprising to me since I figured that nixpkgs would already have some method of notifying maintainers when someone makes a PR/issue related to their project. Not sure how that works, or if it exists at all.

BTW nixpkgs-upkeep is happy to accept PRs/requests for other packages to be auto-updated! Especially packages that are not already covered by GitHub - ryantm/nixpkgs-update: Updating nixpkgs packages since 2018.

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I think the two maintainers are already tagged: ofborg requested reviews from them. Perhaps someone wants to become another maintainer for the package? :slight_smile:

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I think having additional maintainers helps a lot. I am more inclined to merge a commit without extensive testing if one of the stakeholders (thus maintainers) reviews a PR, I’d think that applies to others as well.

What also helps:

  • Adding the output of nixpkgs-review.
  • Rather than a brief LGTM, give a short list of what you did to review the PR. E.g. checked that the program works correctly, check that the commit message corresponds to the guidelines, etc.

There is a nice list plus a template here:

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As danieldk already said adding nixpkgs-review from you and another person really helps knowing that the package at least builds, ofborg takes care of the eval part and writing a quick message that you tested it that it at least opens and you can edit stuff is also nice.

After that you can write here PRs already reviewed - #304 or give me a quick nudge through review, irc or a mention and I try to merge it within a few days.

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