Hello! [email protected] writes:
> Dear guix community, > > I started using Guix just under 4 weeks ago (bootstrapped with `guix > system init`). It was challenging and fun and it feels like I finally > found an OS that is DIY, scalable and encourages tinkering (I love `guix > shell`). > > The OS, the package manager has so, soo much to love and inspired me to > decide this project is worth my time to hopefully improve and build with > others. The enthusiasm is always welcomed, I hope to see you around. > The experience from my first PR`s with package updates is, that I > noticed almost all of them getting some activity, but would have > expected things like browser updates that contain fixes for public CVE's > to be merged quicker (e.g. https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/pulls/11882, > there is also https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/pulls/11614 by madage > (thank you btw)). > In general I noticed what seemed to me quite a few open PR's some of > them aging slowly day by day. On the one hand this is great as many > others seem to feel about guix similar to me. > On the other hand I think guix is such a great foundation that it > saddens me that updates are not merged within a timeframe of say 1-2 > days and to see all of this energy pile up as backlog. > > I hope this does not come across as criticism. This is explicitly a > newcomers perspective that comes from a fairly large fast moving distro, > where I didn't contribute (and rarely felt motivated/compelled to do > so). > > Really what I am curious about is this: > * Do you guys in general share the value of up to date software? Yes, we do. Unfortunately, as other's pointed out, it's quite time consuming to be up to date with so few hands. Sometimes we just lack enough volunteers to keep the world up to date. > * If yes, is there anything I as a newcomer could do to help us achieve > this shared value? You are more than welcomed to participate in the different aspects of the community. You can help with reviews, improve documentation, advocacy, infrastructure, etc. Anything you fancy. Some members of the community have been raising awareness on how an auto updater bot could release great part of the workload that our contributors face. If this is something that would be of your interest, please do no hesitate to participate in the development of this kind of tooling. There is this proof of concept of an updater bot that Gabriel did: [1] https://codeberg.org/gabber/GGABS On my side, I've recently made this small extension to help channel maintainers keep up to date with Guix deprecations. [2] https://codeberg.org/guix-extensions/removal-reporter Any tooling/extension that can ease the maintenance burden is more than welcomed. In case you are interested in developing some extension, checkout this blog post I wrote to get newcomers started: [3] https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2026/extending-guix > * What are your thoughts on this? Do I maybe have the wrong > expectations? I think we should aspire to improve the situation. As other's pointed out, there is some quality assurance we do in Guix that slows down the process, but we always welcome improvements. Best regards, Sergio
