Add experimental installer to installer tests #14002
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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 foundA 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 themaster
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!Add 👍 to pull requests you find important.
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