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

[Stefan Huchler]

So because I dont need always newest versions on all of my boxes, I
selected the 16.xx chhannel.

There are here and there some minor issues as example kodi here and
there crashes maybe 1-3 times a week. Could be extentions or something.

For that and other reasons I update here and there all few weeks maybe
the maschine.

So one advantage of course is that if I notice that something does not
work I can boot a old configuration, so I dont have to deal with some
updates that broke stuff or rollback.

But I wonder how you can break relativly often stuff (at the moment
there seems to be a python dependency problem with flexget, that makes
the daemon crash), in a "stable" release channel.

I mean if I use debian, and stick to my "channel"/release, normaly
nothing breaks, as long as I use only their package installer, pip
updates of course broke stuff. If I use fedora, well I get maybe some
upstream changes like new kernel versions, but normaly they brake also
nothing.

So if "stable" channel makes updates that are not needed (the older
version of flexget works fine), whats the point or the criterias of
those releases? I could then just use the newest version, if I have to
relay on rollback / boot old versions anyway, I dont really see the
point of "stable" channels.

I had pretty good experiences with using the rolling channel, but had
many times break stuff in the stable channel.

Also the tools around generations / boot-generations is very confusing,
why do I have 3 4 options in the nix-env --list-generation overview but
20 in the boot menu.

But thats a 2nd different issue I guess.

Just wonder what your policies are.

Other stuff that broke on me in the past, was latex packages as example.