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@getchoo getchoo commented Sep 16, 2025

Motivation

Note

This is part of the discussion with the Nix and Experimental Installer team on 13-08-2025

A good way to test the new installer is to dogfood it alongside the currently existing one. This PR adds that ability to the internal install-nix-action, and implements it as a scenario to the installer test job matrix :)

Context

  • Runs are currently very inconsistent due to Internal detection of nix binary path is inconsistent after Nix 2.29 experimental-nix-installer#47. This will be a draft until that is fixed or a workaround is found

  • A successful run on Linux (and an example of the above bug occuring on macOS) can be found here

  • In the future, it would probably be a good idea to use the main branch of the installer alongside the master version of Nix. That could be easily added with this workflow though, probably taking example from the already existing methods for finding artifacts. It would only require the experimental installer repo to actually generate artifacts...which it currently doesn't. If the installer was ever pulled in-tree, this would also be even easier!


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@adamcstephens adamcstephens left a comment

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Overall this looks like a good first pass to me.

EXPERIMENTAL_INSTALLER_ARTIFACT="nix-installer-$INSTALLER_ARCH-$INSTALLER_OS"
EXPERIMENTAL_INSTALLER_PATH="$GITHUB_WORKSPACE/$EXPERIMENTAL_INSTALLER_ARTIFACT"
# TODO: This uses the latest release. It should probably be pinned, or dogfood the experimental repo's default branch - similar to the above

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One option would be to add another input and matrix item to allow you to target target both release and master. Though I'd probably add later as needed.

@getchoo getchoo force-pushed the getchoo/dogfood-experimental-installer branch from 43653c6 to a2fe65b Compare September 20, 2025 01:37
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2 participants