[Nix-dev] Regarding the unstable channel

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

On 14/12/15 14:53, Eric Sagnes wrote:

> I am using the unstable channel and recently encoutered some issues to update 
> the system with `nixos-rebuild`, to list a few:
> 
> - flashplayer source not found (PR #11675)
> - udevil not building (PR #11702)
> - signing-party source not found (PR #11703)
> 
> All these issues have in common that the binary substitute was not available 
> and they were triggered during source building.
> As I understand it, a channel is updated when *all* the packages have been
> built and the binary cache is available [1].

Flash player is not built by Hydra at all, being proprietary.

Regarding the other packages, they're not release blockers, so if they fail to
build the channel will still be updated.

> I totally understand that issues are expected when using the something labelled 
> unstable, but it might confuse some less technical users, or worse give a bad 
> impression to people that are trying NixOS.

It's like you said: for the unstable branch, this kind of breakage is
unavoidable and to be expected. Most users should therefore stick to the stable
branches.

> I am not familiar with hydra so I don't know what is possible to improve 
> the situation. 
> But for example, could it be possible to update the unstable channel when none 
> or only a few jobs fail?

Sure, but then the unstable channel would *never* update :-) It's already hard
enough to get all the release-blocking builds/tests to succeed simultaneously.

> Also, I have no idea if it is technically possible, but having an automatic 
> weekly digest on the ML with some hydra evaluations statistics and a list of 
> "newly failing jobs" could be a way to bring attention on potential issues.

You can see all broken packages on the unstable branch here:

  http://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixos/trunk-combined

and the release blockers:

  http://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixos/trunk-combined/tested#tabs-constituents

By contrast, the 15.09 branch:

  http://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixos/release-15.09

-- 
Eelco Dolstra | LogicBlox, Inc. | http://nixos.org/~eelco/