Hi, 👋

Thanks for taking time to improve NixOS :)

Few people have write access to this repository, and PRs really shouldn't exist here, but I think you know already. I think the principle behind your changes are good.

Let's see if we can get something useful going here.

@edolstra we might want to make a branch, e.g. 000-readme with a single commit with a README note explaining the archival status of this repository.

This way we don't add a commit that does not exist in Nixpkgs to the main branch.

This repo isn't archived yet since we're still mirroring the 20.03 branches to it. See NixOS/nixpkgs#99257. In a few months we can archive it.

Yeah that makes sense, it's just nice to have a note describing why it says deprecated in the description and what to move to instead since this isn't receiving updates anymore.

Well, the "About" on the repo page does say "DEPRECATED! This is an obsolete, read-only mirror of the NixOS/nixpkgs repository."

Right but it doesn't say what to do about it or what your alternatives are. I think @samueldr's suggestion is great.

@edolstra we might want to make a branch, e.g. 000-readme with a single commit with a README note explaining the archival status of this repository.

This way we don't add a commit that does not exist in Nixpkgs to the main branch.

Just fielded a question in #nixos from someone confused about this. Would making this theoretical README branch the default branch break anything? (I guess maybe if people are relying on getting a useful nixpkgs from git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels?)

That was me with @abathur on IRC.

Also found the notice and like @changlinli mentioned, I wasn't sure what to do or where to go next.

As there are several issues and places where discussion happened, including the present issue, perhaps a compromise solution would be to add a link to one of the issues, from the "DEPRECATED!" notice/description.

Would making this theoretical README branch the default branch break anything? (I guess maybe if people are relying on getting a useful nixpkgs from git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels?)

Add a default.nix that throw "useful explanation" in addition to the README.

In fact, I propose all branches, at least the unstable ones, should get a final breaking change, probably a soft trace for a month, and a fatal throw afterward.

I suspect many end-users might accidentally be tracking the unstable branch, and not getting any updates.

I also suspect approximately no one reads the "About" blurb, especially for a repo they already know about.

I'm willing to bet that if we changed the, admittedly higher traffic, Nixpkgs repo "About" blurb to I'm a banana! 🍌 hardly anyone would notice.

By this, I mean that the short repository description is probably not enough communication in the constraints github gives us.

Cases from #nixos I personally noticed:

• https://logs.nix.samueldr.com/nixos/2020-11-16#1605485554-1605485443;

I've pushed new README to reflect the current state.

Can you also add a note to the discourse thread (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/github-com-nixos-nixpkgs-channels-deprecated/9455)? I know it seems obvious but

Are the nixos-* branches in the github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs repo a valid replacement and kept in sync with the channels automatically?

Just got a reply on IRC, apparently that’s the replacement.

is probably the one line statement most people need to migrate, which is mentioned in the associated issue, but isn't stated quite outright.