Why is there no 24-11 tag in the GH repo?

Development
1

For the previous releases we had a tag in the GH repo that allowed to pin a specific version of nixpkgs in a shell.nix:

with import
  (fetchTarball {
    url = "https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs/archive/refs/tags/24.05.tar.gz";
  })
{ };

However there is no tag for 24.11 (there is one named branch-off-24.11 though).

Why? This is a bit confusing.

2

It’s because you’re not meant to use it, and the change in name should now make that clear.

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3

How should I pin a specific nixpkgs release in a shell.nix then?

4

You can always refer to the tarball of the branch name on GitHub. See the example in the shell.nix tutorial. It’s also possible to specify a certain commit to ensure exact reproducibility (as far as technically possible).

It’s more convenient to manage dependencies on remote file system trees — such as adding source specifications, updating versions, and doing that programmatically e.g. in CI — with dedicated tooling. For example, see the introduction to npins.

And here’s some more information about release naming conventions.

5

You want to reference nixos-24.11.

2 Likes
6

Btw this was already asked before - NixOS 24.11 released - #13 by dkl
Discussion there explains why not to use this tag, etc.

EDIT: fixed the link

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