chromium{Beta,Dev},google-chrome-{beta,dev}: drop

[emilylange]

Description of changes

This is mainly due to the lack of maintenance in nixpkgs. google-chrome-{beta,dev} depend on chromium{Beta,Dev}'s version info.

chromium{Beta,Dev} are rarely updated and explicitly blocklisted by hydra.nixos.org, meaning they are almost always outdated and not cached in cache.nixos.org.

chromium{Beta,Dev} were intended to fix the build derivation of each new major release (if something broke) before stable reached that new major release.
Allowing for fast bumps in nixpkgs, especially if the stable bump contains very important critical security fixes.

Something that can easily be replicated by using an early-stable release or by manually entering an dev/beta version string in stable's upstream-info.nix.

This resolves exposing end-users to outdated and vulnerable google-chrome-{beta,dev} and chromium{Beta,Dev} versions.

Deadline: 2023-10-29 UTC (which is one day before the "Restrict all breaking changes with the exception of desktop environments" in our 23.11 release schedule #258640).

Ref: #255197

cc (chromium{,Beta,Dev}): @primeos @thefloweringash @networkException @emilylange
cc (google-chrome{,-beta,-dev}): @primeos

Things done

• Built on platform(s)
  • x86_64-linux
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • aarch64-darwin
• For non-Linux: Is sandbox = true set in nix.conf? (See Nix manual)
• Tested, as applicable:
  • NixOS test(s) (look inside nixos/tests)
  • and/or package tests
  • or, for functions and "core" functionality, tests in lib/tests or pkgs/test
  • made sure NixOS tests are linked to the relevant packages
• Tested compilation of all packages that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review rev HEAD". Note: all changes have to be committed, also see nixpkgs-review usage
• Tested basic functionality of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• 23.11 Release Notes (or backporting 23.05 Release notes)
  • (Package updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is major or breaking
  • (Module updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is significant
  • (Module addition) Added a release notes entry if adding a new NixOS module
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

[networkException]

Besides @emilylange I'm currently more or less the only active maintainer. I don't have the capacity to maintain dev or beta myself (I've been doing stable bumps pretty much exclusively) and don't see any real interest from other maintainers or outside contributors, as such I support this removal.

[lorenz]

Not a maintainer, but I am also in favor of this. As these are not built by Hydra they are not useful for casual testing of newer versions and people who hack on Chromium or its packaging don't need them as they'll change the chromium derivation directly.

[Nanotwerp]

What would be the best way to override the version of Chrome/Chromium? Would it involve overriding the upstream-info.nix file used for the package? I'm not sure how to do this without getting billions of errors after attempting to rebuild.

[emilylange]

@Nanotwerp^
Chrome and Chromium are very different in nixpkgs.
Chrome is essentially a wrapper around the official binary release from Google, while Chromium is built from source, leveraging a fairly complex built-process.

I am not quite sure if you are asking how to override the version from within nixpkgs, e.g. for a PR, or as a consumer/user of nixpkgs.
And, e.g. if what you are trying to accomplish is using an older or newer version than in nixpkgs.

Either way, I would suggest that you create a new issue instead, so we don't end up creating a huge thread here, related to, but not quite the topic of this PR.

Thank you very much :)

[emilylange]

Today is the deadline day (2023-10-29 UTC), as mentioned in my opening comment.

There were no objection to drop chromiumBeta, chromiumDev, google-chrome-beta and google-chrome-dev.

I am, however, a bit disappointed, that none of the other maintainers (@primeos and @thefloweringash) responded or at least acknowledged it in any way. But I am afraid that's something I expected, given their lack of activity in the past months.

Merging.

[nixos-discourse]

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

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/fresh-google-chrome-dev-in-nixos/35124/1

[nixos-discourse]

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

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/chrome-wayland/35395/9