Zoom-US -- How do I force an update to the current version?

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1

How do I force my nixos to install the latest version of the ‘zoom-us’ package? Or more generally, any package?

My nix.configuration currently references ‘zoom-us’ and installs version ‘5.11.1 (3595)’, however, this version has some issues which are fixed in the latest version ‘5.12.0.4682’.

I’ve rebuilt my nixos several times using 'nixos-rebuild switch ’ command, but it never seems to upgrade to the latest version of this package.

What am I doing incorrectly? Thoughts?

Thanks.

2

P.S. I’m currently on channel ‘nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-22.05’

3

You probably want to update your channels first with sudo nix-channel --update. Then do your sudo nixos-rebuild switch.

1 Like
4

Still learning nix here; hopefully asking a better follow up question …

How can I change my ‘configuration.nix’ file to allow selection of both ‘stable’ and ‘unstable’ packages? Currently, I’m only referencing ‘stable’ packages within my configuration.

(Context) We’ve created a standardized ‘configuration.nix’ development environment with a specific set of packages configured to operate in a specific way that gets rolled out to our development team to keep everyone in sync from time-to-time.

In this case, we discovered our zoom-us package (the stable version) has an issue, which has been fixed in the latest release (the unstable version) that we’d like to try out.

Thanks.

5

There’s no need, at least currently, to use zoom-us from unstable. The version available on the stable channel right now is 5.12.0.4682. You just haven’t updated your channel…

6

Not quite, the current stable version (5.12.0.4682) – does not fix the issue in question. It is reported that the version (5.12.2.4816) on the unstable channel does.

7

Ah, those weren’t the version numbers from the original post, so I misunderstood.

If you want to use unstable packages, you’ll need to add an unstable channel alongside your normal channel using sudo nix-channel --add. You can name it whatever you want, but I’ll go with unstable here. Then you can put something like

let
  unstable = import <unstable> {};
in

at the the top of your configuration.nix and put unstable.zoom-us in your environment.systemPackages.

Also, note that when you have additional channels, nixos-rebuild --upgrade switch does NOT update them. It only updates the nixos channel. So you should use sudo nix-channel --update to update your channels.

1 Like
8

Many thanks!

Btw, for others that may discover this feedback, if ‘unfree’ packages are needed, use the following:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:
let
  unstable = import <unstable> {config = { allowUnfree = true; };};
in 
{
  environment.systemPackages = [ 
 {
   pkgs.<my-stable-package>
   unstable.<my-unstable-package>
 }
}

Thanks tejing for the quick help!

9

Consider using Flakes when centrally distributing configs like this. They contain a flake.lock file that nails all dependencies to a specific commit. IMHO makes it much easier to ensure that everyone has the same version and also easier to spot if someone hasn’t (their flake.lock will be different which ideally git shows promptly). And people don’t need to remember to update their channels.

3 Likes
10

Good advice. Will consider for future.