consider using nix-update

[colemickens]

No description provided.

[colemickens]

cc: @Artturin I started using nix-update for my own pkgs in my personal nix config and it seems to work well. I'm always down to delete code I don't want to maintain.

The only thing is, I'm not sure about how to handle it with the "override nixpkgs" concept we have going here and that you made nicer somewhat recently.

It might be possible, actually, to use nix-update and one of the options to tell it to use a different file for the replacement, instead of the pkg definition loc.

Just leaving this here as a note, and if you have any thoughts about it.

[Artturin]

this should be useful for us NixOS/nixpkgs#205264

nix-update has a run update scripts (passthru.updateScript, see --use-update-script flag)

[colemickens]

I think with --override-filename that shouldn't even be necessary. I haven't read nix-update fully, but I assume it evals the pkg, uses nix's internal location to update the file. With --override-filename, presumably it should work and then just update the metadata.nix that is consistently used for all pkgs anyway.

Eventually I'll poke at it...

[Artturin]

This works
nix-update --flake packages.x86_64-linux.wlroots --override-file pkgs/wlroots/metadata.nix --version branch

EDIT which is what you're already doing in #466 :D