Re: Nixpkgs updates

Alyssa Ross
2026-02-23T15:56:17Z

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Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2/9/26 14:41, Alyssa Ross wrote:
>> Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 2/9/26 03:02, Yureka wrote:
>>>> My systems attempted to build a spectrum image against nixpkgs master
>>>> last night, and failed because of pkgsMusl.netpbm and pkgsMusl.gdb,
>>>> which are known blockers since the GCC 15 updates:
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20author%3Ayuyuyureka
>>>
>>> Can those be removed from the closure somehow?
>>
>> I'm pretty sure I answered a very similar question last time, but just
>> in case: it would likely be more ongoing maintenance work to maintain
>> closure reducing overrides than it would be to fix the occasional build
>> failure of a dependency that is not strictly required, at least until we
>> have better tooling for identifying problematic Nixpkgs changes. In
>> addition, that larger amount of work would have less overall utility,
>> because package fixes benefit other Nixpkgs users, whereas adding to an
>> ever-expanding list of local overrides does not.
>
> What would the plan be if Spectrum had already been released?
> Not being able to ship security fixes while nixpkgs is fixed
> would be bad.

We'd, in rough order of preference:

- Use an overlay to apply a patch downstream
- Use an overlay to temporarily disable dependencies
- Use a modified Nixpkgs input

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