[Nix-dev] Why having releases if you break things in it often

[Stefan Huchler]

Hello,

I start to get frustrated again, the documentation of nixos is not very
good if you do more than just the most basic stuff.

So you kind of are if you are not a full-time nixos developer dependend
of help from the developers.

So I wrote here about the bug, then I startet a bugreport:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/22246

Nothing happens at all. Well nobody else does anything about lets try to
find a workaround.

I dont even care anymore if it is a imperative solution or anything, its
just absolutly inaccaptable that there not even any workaround.

I may have a different bug now after maybe installing a different
version (unstable) of flexget, now its with beautifulsoup.

nix-env  -f
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-unstable.tar.gz
-i  python2.7-FlexGet-1.2.337

I did that. Now I get the next error, how can that be such a big big bug
in every channels and completly broken and no real solution there, if a
change messes up such huge stuff cant you revert it?

in other distros I would use just python-pip and it would work, now you
took the challenge on you to manage that, but if that leads to MORE
problems then pip already has, it really sucks.

I still dont get how you can brake working things just cause of some minor
security problems.

And of course some bad things happen, but at least give either a fast
fix or as alternative any workaround.

There are 85 mio nix* commands/options and config files, I am not a full-time
nixos developer, I dont understand all of that many different ways you
can do stuff.

So any help would be nice. I am a technicaly shurly keen guy, but I cant
reboot daily my machine for months, cause nobody of you experts can
invest 5-15 mins to fix that.

Sorry for whining but I am not used to me throwing brain and time after
something x times and nothing advances at all.

I dont want to be a 100% full time nixos developer / sysadmin just to
solve such stupid problem. Except somebody would pay me for that, then I
would think about it.

I guess its maybe a rare case that you have 2 versions that both dont
work 100%, so I cant just use a older version and wait months till you
fix that problem finaly. But even than it would suck cause I cant really
test new configurations in taht case.

I would try to learn nixos better, but the documentation is horrible. I
had 0 problems using, ubuntu / fedora / debian / archlinux / gentoo, but
the doku of nixos is horrible.

Heck if I want to know a package name I have to search on github for
package names and options.

So
1. bug reports dont work...
2. RTFM cant be done because the doku is horrible
3. mailing list seem to not work either?

Is that really what I have to expect?

Sorry for ranting here, I stopp now, but maybe some of that feedback
helps you to improve something, and maybe somebody could give me some
config lines or nix-env commands that gets flexget running again.

Graham Christensen <graham at grahamc.com> writes:

> I'm very sorry you've had a bad experience with breakage on stable. :( I
> use 16.09 myself.
>
>>> yes I think that html5lib thing would it be. So it was at least a
>>> security fix, so you dont just update stuff to update it, which would
>>> make releases pretty useless concept :)
>
> Roughly, this is why backports happen:
>
>  - Security patches which aren't major updates
>  - If a security patch is a major upgrade, try and find patches to our
>    current version which accomplish the same goal. Apply the major
>    update to master, and the patches to stable. 
>  - Bug fixes to applications which, again, aren't major updates.
>    Generally be cautious about these. 
>  - Any updates when the current stable version is utterly broken. A key
>    example of this is Spotify, who regularly breaks their old versions. 
>  - Extremely security-sensitive software, in particular Chrome,
>    Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird, and of course the kernel.
>  
>>> Sorry I formulated that message a bit trollish, but just wanted to learn
>>> why how releases are done in nixos.
>
> Please know that Freddy, Franz, Robin, Domen, myself, and the rest of
> the people contributing to NixOS work very hard to keep the stable
> version of NixOS working nicely. This is very important to us. 
>
> It can be very stressful when preparing to backport changes, but it is
> important to do them anyway. I try to think through impact and run tests
> across a wide range of software to see what will break. We also try not
> to backport any substantial changes, but instead smaller patches to
> prevent breakage.
>
> When you do find breakage, please do promptly open an issue on send a
> report on the mailing list so we can address the problem and perhaps add
> testing to prevent it in the future. We're also quite accessible on the
> #nixos IRC channel on Freenode.
>
> If you would like to take part in the process of identifying and solving
> security problems on master and backporting to stable, we sure would
> love the extra help -- feel free to comment on
> https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/21967 and I'll tag you on
> Wednesday when I open the next roundup.
>
> Best,
> Graham Christensen