Grimmauld
4525c1a464
Librewolf is in a bad shape. Not just in nixpkgs, but upstream as well. In nixpkgs, browsers have been a constant painful argument. I have written up #405187 to clarify some security requirements for packages. While Librewolf doesn't immediately violate the requirements outlined there, we should strive for better than just the absolute minimum. Personally, I no longer feel confident in my ability to adequately contribute, test, and backport Librewolf updates. The past few months have been stressful IRL, and maintaining a browser in nixpkgs is no longer sustainable for me. In the time I intended to take a break, #471511 was opened to update to 146.0.1. This was not merged in a timely manner, despite me not being the only committer among LW maintainers. librewolf-bin isn't looking much better. #464467 is open since Nov 24th, entirely unacceptable for a browser. The single remaining maintainer, @DominicWrege, already proposed dropping the package entirely, LeSuisse marked it vulnerable in the meantime. The situation upstream does not look much better. Checking the [commit history](https://codeberg.org/librewolf/source/commits/branch/main), they are barely keeping up with upstream firefox. The maintainers have repeatedly communicated (on matrix) they were close to burning out. The code changes being done are mostly bumps with patch rebases, removals of patches which no longer apply, and a lot of somewhat trivial changes. Very few substantial changes to librewolf itself are made. I originally switched to Librewolf when firefox expanded their enshitification efforts, at a time where search engine policies were not possible to define with mainline firefox. Mainline started supporting search engine policies since. While enshitification did not slow down, librewolf does not keep up sufficiently to combat that effectively. I appreciate the project for what it does and tries to do. But i no longer believe the project is sustainable. Not in nixpkgs, and probably not upstream either. Well, what now? I am not the last maintainer of librewolf source package. I am hoping someone else will step up, and maybe start actually committing open PRs too. Personally, i will be moving back to mainline firefox, and apply [Phoenix](https://github.com/celenityy/Phoenix). Phoenix has a nice flake, and does not require a browser recompile for the changes it does. Phoenix does many of the things librewolf does, while imposing less of a maintainance burden. I wish the best of luck to all remaining librewolf maintainers.
Nixpkgs is a collection of over 120,000 software packages that can be installed with the Nix package manager. It also implements NixOS, a purely-functional Linux distribution.
Manuals
- NixOS Manual - how to install, configure, and maintain a purely-functional Linux distribution
- Nixpkgs Manual - contributing to Nixpkgs and using programming-language-specific Nix expressions
- Nix Package Manager Manual - how to write Nix expressions (programs), and how to use Nix command line tools
Community
- Discourse Forum
- Matrix Chat
- Official wiki
- Community-maintained list of ways to get in touch (Discord, Telegram, IRC, etc.)
Other Project Repositories
The sources of all official Nix-related projects are in the NixOS organization on GitHub. Here are some of the main ones:
- Nix - the purely functional package manager
- NixOps - the tool to remotely deploy NixOS machines
- nixos-hardware - NixOS profiles to optimize settings for different hardware
- Nix RFCs - the formal process for making substantial changes to the community
- NixOS homepage - the NixOS.org website
- hydra - our continuous integration system
- NixOS Branding - NixOS branding
Continuous Integration and Distribution
Nixpkgs and NixOS are built and tested by our continuous integration system, Hydra.
- Continuous package builds for unstable/master
- Continuous package builds for the NixOS 25.05 release
- Tests for unstable/master
- Tests for the NixOS 25.05 release
Artifacts successfully built with Hydra are published to cache at https://cache.nixos.org/. When successful build and test criteria are met, the Nixpkgs expressions are distributed via Nix channels.
Contributing
Nixpkgs is among the most active projects on GitHub. While thousands of open issues and pull requests might seem like a lot at first, it helps to consider it in the context of the scope of the project. Nixpkgs describes how to build tens of thousands of pieces of software and implements a Linux distribution. The GitHub Insights page gives a sense of the project activity.
Community contributions are always welcome through GitHub Issues and Pull Requests.
For more information about contributing to the project, please visit the contributing page.
Donations
The infrastructure for NixOS and related projects is maintained by a nonprofit organization, the NixOS Foundation. To ensure the continuity and expansion of the NixOS infrastructure, we are looking for donations to our organization.
You can donate to the NixOS foundation through SEPA bank transfers or by using Open Collective:
License
Nixpkgs is licensed under the MIT License.
Note
MIT license does not apply to the packages built by Nixpkgs, merely to the files in this repository (the Nix expressions, build scripts, NixOS modules, etc.). It also might not apply to patches included in Nixpkgs, which may be derivative works of the packages to which they apply. The aforementioned artifacts are all covered by the licenses of the respective packages.