Updating automatically aka. running `nixpkgs-update`

Hi!

[ Not sure if core is definitely the best category here, but I thought I just put it here for now. ]

Mostly as it says in the title. nixpkgs-update is a tool which creates package update PRs automatically if the package can be mechanically updated & builds successfully.

Since this takes a load of work of the maintainers hand, esp. core maintainers and committers, this should be an important topic for us too.

At least for the set of core packages, I could provide infrastructure for running it against our fork of nixpkgs and be willing to keep it running. At least for the core set of packages, since these are the most important.

Before starting with anything, I’d like to discuss this first a bit, of course.

  • Do we want/need this?
    From a package maintainer perspective: definitely yes, see above.
  • Mid/long-term: I can definitely provide the needed infra for now as stated, but should this eventually move to organization-owned infra at some point?
    From a transparency standpoint, as well as having “no-single-point-of-failure”-person, I’d say yes, but definitely a point that needs to be discussed.
  • Short/mid-term: We would need to (at least soft- for now) fork nixpkgs-update into our own forge/organization, as diverting from Nix in the future is given.

These are just some things quickly from the top of my head. Please do not hestitate with more questions/topics to discuss regarding this!

Cheers,
Christoph

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I think a tool like this is absolutely necessary for the success of the project once we reach Phase 2. I’ll mention that we also have another tool which performs a similar role, but updates things in place (does not create a PR):

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