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

[Graham Christensen]

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