NixOS 24.11 - Feature Freeze & Release Blockers

[RossComputerGuy]

Hello, this is your NixOS 24.11 ("Vicuna") release managers, Tristan Ross & Weijia Wang.

Today we're glad to announce the kickoff of the release schedule. Because of that, it's time to discuss the feature freeze. NixOS releases have had a history of being stable and reliable and we would like to continue that. I would like to also point out that if there's any issues with the aarch64 platforms, that we could get those fixed or any other improvements done.

Some important dates of concern:

• 2024-10-11: Restrict breaking changes to Release Critical Packages
• 2024-10-25: Restrict all breaking changes: allow only non-breaking updates and Desktop Manager changes

Our full 24.11 release schedule is available here: #339153

As of the time of posting this, we have a couple weeks before the release critical changes are restricted. If at all possible, let's get those done as soon as possible.

Blockers

If you were pinged or know of any blocking issues for NixOS 24.11, please submit them in the issue tracker and place them into the 24.11 Blockers project.

Check-in

Please comment your status quo and possible issues as soon as possible. We'll check teams once they have checked in.

If you think some subsystem, person or team should be added or removed from this list, update maintainers/team-list.nix in time before the next feature freeze announcement.

Desktop environments

• Cinnamon: @bobby285271 @mkg20001
• DDE: @wineee
• Enlightenment: @NixOS/enlightenment
• GNOME: @NixOS/gnome @bobby285271 @dasj19
• Lomiri: @OPNA2608
• Lumina: @NixOS/lumina
• LXQt: @NixOS/lxqt
• MATE: @bobby285271 @johannesloetzsch @romildo
• Pantheon: @NixOS/pantheon
• Qt / KDE: @NixOS/qt-kde @ilya-fedin @K900 @LunNova @mjm @NickCao @SuperSandro2000
• Xfce: @bobby285271 @romildo @muscaln

Platforms

• Darwin: @NixOS/darwin-maintainers

Languages ecosystem

• BEAM: @NixOS/beam @minijackson
• C: @matthewbauer @Mic92
• Coq: @CohenCyril @Zimmi48 @siraben @vbgl @Alizter
• Dhall: @Gabriella439 @ehmry
• Go: @NixOS/golang
• Haskell: @NixOS/haskell
• lisp: @NixOS/lisp @hraban
• lua: @NixOS/lua
• Node.js: @winterqt
• OCaml: @NixOS/ocaml
• Perl: @stigtsp @marcusramberg @zakame
• PHP: @NixOS/php @piotrkwiecinski
• Python: @mweinelt @natsukium
• R: @b-rodrigues @bcdarwin @jbedo @Kupac
• Rust: @NixOS/rust
• Zig: @figsoda

Compilers, build systems

• Bazel: @mboes @uri-canva @avdv @olebedev @groodt @aherrmann @ylecornec
• LLVM: @NixOS/llvm

Programs

• CloudPosse: @dudymas
• Geospatial: @NixOS/geospatial @autra @l0b0
• Lix ecosystem: @RaitoBezarius @Qyriad

Modules

• ACME: @aanderse @arianvp @emilazy @flokli @m1cr0man
• systemd: @NixOS/systemd

Core

• Docs: @NixOS/documentation-team
• Marketing: @garbas @tomberek
• Module system: @infinisil @roberth
• Nix/nix-cli ecosystem: @NixOS/nix-team
• NixOS tests: @tfc

Everyone Else

@NixOS/nixpkgs-committers @NixOS/release-engineers

Finally

No issue is too big or too small, but let's remember that we are all working on the project voluntarily in our free time here, so let's focus on issues that can be realistically addressed in the remaining time before the release.

We thank everyone for their contribution!

[RossComputerGuy]

More pings since GitHub limits the amount of pings, please refer to the original issue for the checkboxes

Modules

• ACME: @arianvp @emilazy @flokli @m1cr0man

Core

• Marketing: @garbas @tomberek
• Module system: @infinisil @roberth
• Nix/nix-cli ecosystem: @NixOS/nix-team

[K900]

Plasma is waiting for the staging-next cycle, and then the 6.2 release in two weeks (2024-10-08 target), the beta builds and is usable on #341487, there will probably need to be some last minute changes for the final release.

Edit: Qt 6.7.3 also finally released today, I'll try to get it into this cycle.

[emilazy]

The primary Darwin blocker is Randy’s SDK rework, which is targeted for the next staging cycle and critical to the health of the platform. It will significantly reduce the burden of supporting macOS, both for the core Darwin maintainers and packagers of any software that works on it, and although it is mostly compatible, it still requires significant changes to the Darwin standard environment and some API deprecations. Missing 24.11 would be devastating for backports, especially as more and more packages are starting to require newer SDKs that we don’t currently have packaged, but thankfully the work is on track and has already been very well‐tested, so I expect it to be merged relatively uneventfully.

[NickCao]

Plasma is waiting for the staging-next cycle, and then the 6.2 release in two weeks (2024-10-08 target), the beta builds and is usable on #341487, there will probably need to be some last minute changes for the final release.

Edit: Qt 6.7.3 also finally released today, I'll try to get it into this cycle.

Qt 6.8 is also targeting a 2024-10-08 release, I'd prefer getting that in.

[K900]

I would not want to risk a Qt bump in the last staging cycle of the release. We can get it in post release.

[jbedo]

For R a significant portion of the package tree is broken due to some packages explicitly enabling http support in libxml2 (notably gdal and libspatialite). The overriding results in multiple versions of libxml in the closure of some packages and causes subsequent loading issues. Not sure what the solution here is.

[mweinelt]

Python has done the necessary migration to the 3.12 release track early in the development cycle, so we don't have any blockers at this time.

[stigtsp]

Perl 5.40.0 is in staging-next at the moment. A mass update for perlPackages should begin soon, and hope to get that done for 24.11.

[ElvishJerricco]

This is not essential, but I've been hoping to get systemd initrd enabled by default for this release. Here's the blockers for that:

• GDM + GNOME crashes after 20 seconds with autologin, systemd initrd, and plymouth enabled. #309190 It's still not known why this happens, but a fix is known. We need to put GDM on tty1, which requires switch-to-configuration changes to avoid its [email protected] directive killing the desktop.
• bcachefs: unlock-bcachefs-*.service fails with device = "UUID=..." #317901 I don't care too much about this, because bcachefs is experimental after all. But I do have a solution for it: https://github.com/ElvishJerricco/bcachefs-fstab-generator
• systemd initrd decryption prompt times out after 90 seconds #250003 This is a slightly breaking change. The planned solution is to set the device timeout to infinite. This has not been done yet.
• We need to detect incompatible options and fallback to scripted initrd when they're used. This also has not been done yet, but it should be relatively easy. There aren't very many incompatible options.

Other than that, I think it's good to go. Please let me know if you have any other problems with it. I intend to fix the above issues in the next week or two.

We can delay this till after 24.11, which would make things easier. But that would be very disappointing IMO.

[happysalada]

No blockers in the beam ecosystem

[Mic92]

Blockers in C, are the mentioned macOS sdk updates. I changed the responsible people for the "nix-cli" to the Nix team, since I have been involved in that bit lately a bit. I don't think there are any blocker on that level. Rust also should be fine.

[Mic92]

I think we can remove the "Marketing" checkmark from the template. I don't think they do have any release blocker related items. Website updates are handled by NixOS release manager except for the final merge.

[hraban]

All quiet on the lisp front. 👍

[Gabriella439]

No blockers for Dhall

[wineee]

No blockers for DDE

[katexochen]

Go blockers (only common maintenance tasks, will be ready in-time):

• go, buildGoModule, buildGoPackage: default to 1.23 #342429 (in current staging-next)
• go_1_21/buildGo121Module: remove #344622 (against master)

[m1cr0man]

No ACME blockers, but we do have some PRs related to the test suite. To get pebble up to 2.6.0 we needed to change some of the assertions. I also have an open change which hopefully makes the tests less flaky

[siriobalmelli]

Foundationdb is currently still broken (#319537 - since 24.05).

I'd love some help getting this sorted and/or moving from foundation 7.1 to 7.3.

Happy to pitch in, just over my head and missing a bit of direction 🙏

[teto]

No lua blocker.

[reckenrode]

The Darwin rework is here:

• darwin: change the SDK pattern, update the SDKs, and update source releases #346043

[fgaz]

If possible I'd like for Tcl to become a language ecosystem / package set before 24.11 to make backports easier:

• tclPackages: init #344716

[raboof]

If we can't fix #345329 then we likely will not have a reproducible minimal iso for this release. That would be sad but realistically I don't think it should be a blocker.

[imincik]

@NixOS/geospatial doesn't have any blockers.

Following PRs would be nice to have in 24.11:

• proj: 9.4.1 -> 9.5.0 #342101

[vbgl]

No blocker for Coq.

No blocker for OCaml.

[romildo]

No block for Enlightenment, Lumina, and LXQt.

[thecaralice]

Would be nice to get #300532 merged since it apparently affects a lot of projects yet is stale for some reason.

[RossComputerGuy]

As per the release schedule, all release critical packages are blocked.

[OPNA2608]

Lomiri DE

Should be fine. There'll be another minor OTA release later this month that might come with some more component bumps. Will check for relevant changes & bump/backport when it happens, not expecting anything serious though.

[K900]

Plasma 6.2 is good to go on master now, and given how long the staging cycle was, we also squeezed in Qt 6.8, which seems to be fine so far, and a big improvement on 6.7 in terms of Wayland stability. I think this was the right call after all.

[SigmaSquadron]

With #347810 being merged, the Xen Project Hypervisor is ready for 24.11. The current collectd PR, the documentation and the VM/stubdom builder are scheduled for 25.05.

[ulrikstrid]

Plasma 6.2 is good to go on master now, and given how long the staging cycle was, we also squeezed in Qt 6.8, which seems to be fine so far, and a big improvement on 6.7 in terms of Wayland stability. I think this was the right call after all.

This broke packages relying on pyqt6, we have a interim-solution in master now but it could break any day since the package url isn't stable. If possible we should wait for a release of pyqt6 that is compatible and package that.

[K900]

We're not holding back a release for PyQt. They still have over a month, hopefully they get their stuff together.

[arianvp]

I would like to get #343939 in before the release.

[ulrikstrid]

We're not holding back a release for PyQt. They still have over a month, hopefully they get their stuff together.

As long as there's a decision I don't mind, I'm not a stable-user anyway

[minijackson]

Can I ask for help getting #331750 reviewed / merged before the 25th? It already has two major bumps

[Eveeifyeve]

I mean nim might be a blocker. Unfortunately I made some mistakes in a pr that caused a brunch of issues like high cpu usage and etc. More about at issue #350913. Just confirming its a nix problem, not a nim problem.

[ehmry]

Nim has been taken care of.

[sternenseemann]

Regarding Ada, I've been working on updating all packages released by AdaCore to their 25.0.0 version: #352856. This would get rid of the dependency on Python 3.9, but I don't think that's a priority for 24.11?! Unfortunately that causes quite a few undiagnosed regressions. Consequently, I don't think this is a good fit for 24.11.

What we could do for 24.11, is upgrading the default gnat version to 13 to match gcc: #352894.

[Artturin]

Misvimiumclick