Document new staging workflow

[worldofpeace]

Describe the bug
Since RFC 26 was merged we have a new staging workflow that involves a staging-next branch.
It was merged on 15 Nov 2018, but was implemented a bit before that.
Part of the Future Work was to document this workflow so new contributors can understand this. We still need to do this.

cc @vcunat @FRidh

[vcunat]

I expect the main thing people need are those three bullets, right? Especially the first two ones, but the workflow change was specifically designed not to really change those two points, so that most people are as little affected as possible.

[vcunat]

Wait, 19.09 already has (some) docs for all this: https://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual/#submitting-changes-staging-next-branch ... so can you (anyone) be more specific about what seems missing?

[worldofpeace]

Wait, 19.09 already has (some) docs for all this: https://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual/#submitting-changes-staging-next-branch ... so can you (anyone) be more specific about what seems missing?

Woah, wonder how I missed that. Added in 62193ec. Though I do think some things are missing because if both of you were to be unavailable the workflow to do the thing is unclear.
Like, from what I see there how are all the merges done?
I've figured out from observation that you

• merge staging into staging-next (begins staging-next process)
• pr to master
• avoid conflicts
  • merge master into staging-next
  • merge staging-next into staging
• merge staging-next into master (promote staging-next to master)

We could also document the details of the jobsets like it is in the RFC, and how is someone supposed to determine staging-next is of sufficient quality? I do understand this involves looking at hydra.

It's documented how to submit changes, but I think the workflow around it isn't.

I'm raising this because I'm getting the impression that maybe more people would like to help out getting staging-next PRs merged, so there is this concept in nixpkgs of the "regular staging-next PR".

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[jtojnar]

We now have automatic reverse flow (master → staging-next → staging) every six hours: #105153

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2022-10-22-documentation-team-meeting-notes-12-nixcon-edition/22689/1

[samueldr]

There is now documentation here:

• https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#staging

Hopefully this fulfills what @worldofpeace wanted to see.