Store binary caches on Cachix?

[JonathanReeve]

It'd be great if there were binary caches somewhere, like on Cachix, since when I try to use the Dell XPS 13 9310 configuration, it tries to rebuild my whole kernel, and you know, ain't nobody got time for that.

[samueldr]

It would need to be done in a way where using nixos-hardware pins to a built/cached Nixpkgs revision. Which may or may not be an issue depending on the needs. I guess as long as only the few leafy components desired are taken from that pinned Nixpkgs, it's less of an issue.

Otherwise it's basically impossible to have all plausible Nixpkgs revision (channel updates) built all the time, in addition to that, it would greatly increase cachix usage needlessly.

[Mic92]

We could add to our nix-community hydra. But in general we should also aim to move kernel options that trigger kernel rebuilds to nixpkgs rather than having them in nixos-hardware. See also this for the dell xps model in question: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/3aabf78bfcae62f5f99474f2ebbbe418f1c6e54f/dell/xps/13-9310/default.nix#L13

[Mic92]

In hydra one can also define some nixpkgs branch as an input in addition to nixos-hardware and build it this way.

[bfcns]

Is there any way to reduce build time yet? At least a method to rebuild faster? I am new to NixOS, so any direction would be nice.

[Mic92]

@zimbatm can we enable hydra on this repository?

[zimbatm]

Good idea. Can you add a declarative pipeline to the repo first?

[RaitoBezarius]

@Mic92 can I help you here? I'm planning to push some stuff in nixos-hardware for routers.

[zimbatm]

If you can add a declarative hydra config to this repo, I can then connect it to Hydra.