[Nix-dev] contributing to nixpkgs/nixos

[Mathijs Kwik]

Hi all,

I've been nixing for 2 weeks now, and of course I ran into
missing/outdated packages, but the overall impression I get from nixos
is superb, so I didn't mind to get my hands dirty and fix stuff I
needed.

I cloned nixos and nixpkgs into git repositories (and keep them
up-to-date using git svn) so I could do my own upgrades and tweaks.

Now what's the procedure for contributing?
And what's the job for maintainers?

My changes are mostly just changing a version number and checksum,
with small tweaks for dependencies/patches/configure flags.
Arch linux allows you to flag packages out-of-date on their website,
but as the nix maintainers team seems a lot smaller, I don't think
nagging them about everything that's slightly outdated is a nice thing
to do.

So should I just send patches to them directly for stuff I upgrade?
Or is there a more general place to submit patches to?

Anyway, for now, my changes are available at
https://github.com/bluescreen303/nixpkgs/commits/master
Feel free to apply them to the official repo.

Thanks,
Mathijs