[Nix-dev] [***SPAM***] Re: Stable NixOS releases

[Marc Weber]

@phreedom
  Do you still remember what exactly broke for new users?

By accident I went offlist (sorry), copy pasting the text here:

Marc Weber
    So again: the real problem is nixos-install not allowing to use
    different revision. If new users trying to build "games" they may run
    into trouble using maintained versions, too (because some are not used
    often)

    So how to improve this?
    if nixos-rebuilds fails an its live-cd environment give users a hint
    about how to proceed, such as stripping options from configuration.nix?

    Because the "minimal set of packages" should always work due to
    automatic tests.

Mathijs Kwik:

    Personally, when I try something new and it fails, I just abort and
    wait "until things become more stable".
    Even if I do investigate and manage to fix/move on, it at the very
    least gives me a bad first impression.

    But maybe that's just me.

my new reply (to the list this time):

  So we should try to understand what went wrong - and start writing test
  cases?

  So what do you want to do do improve? Start masking packages like gentoo
  does? Or start with standard setups new users won't fail with which we
  can test? Eg write a full blown kde enabling configuration.nix to
  /etc/nixos for new users by default? Because new comers won't care, they
  want to see "X" somehow and then start fiddling with the distro?
  And it should not fail at that first "provide X to me"?

  We simply don't have the man power to retest all packages over and over
  again. We have to focus on the most widely used ones. Its sad, but the
  truth.

  New users will use live cds - so does it mean that the revisions
  creating live cds don't depend on important tests (such as does kde
  work?)

  Thus would make the live cd depend on a "is X running" test improve the
  situation? - because if a revisions fails, no live cd would be created?
  (I don't know exactly when the live cds succeed and fail -
  just trying to understand what we really can do about it)

  Do you know what typical "new users" are going to put into their
  configuration.nix?

  Having some tested "starting points" would eventually be the way to go -
  so that we know what to test.

Marc Weber