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Emily 0c19eb3e55 lib/systems: unify ARMv5 platforms with stock kernel configuration

The `sheevaplug` kernel configuration was added a very long time
ago and has not been adjusted for years. `pogoplug4` was identical
to `sheevaplug` except for an even more stripped‐down kernel
configuration, no device tree support, and a different load address
for the uImage.

These days, the stock kernel configuration builds and there has been
an upstream device tree for the Pogoplug Series 4 for years; unify
`sheevaplug` and `pogoplug4` into an `armv5tel-multiplatform` that
uses the standard configuration.

ARMv5 was also the only platform that defaulted to uImage, the [legacy
U‐Boot image format] that is deprecated upstream. Our bootloader
machinery in NixOS does not handle these images in any special way
and even the original ARMv6 Raspberry Pi platform defaults to the
standard zImage. We switch `armv5tel-multiplatform` to zImage to match.

[legacy U‐Boot image format]: https://docs.u-boot.org/en/latest/usage/cmd/bootm.html#legacy-boot

It is of course natural to worry about backwards compatibility
here: this switches to a different kernel image format and drops
support for root on NFS along with random oddities like KGDB and
LatencyTOP. Renaming the platform is intended to help mitigate
this risk.

The reality, however, is that it is currently very
difficult to build a configuration for ARMv5. I found
<https://github.com/thefloweringash/sheevaplug-nix> online as
an example configuration from many years ago; it already set
`autoModules`, and builds U‐Boot using `CONFIG_DISTRO_DEFAULTS`,
which should work out of the box without requiring the legacy U‐Boot
image format.

Even then, however, I confirmed with the author that it hasn’t
been used in years, and I could barely get it to build with
a modern Nixpkgs: OpenSSH is broken, Nix is broken, multiple
default `environment.systemPackages` in the SD image profile
are broken, `boot.initrd.includeDefaultModules` is broken, and
`hardware.enableAllHardware` is broken.

I conclude that if anyone is actively building systems on ARMv5, they
have a forked Nixpkgs or a very custom setup. Given our general move
to standard boot chains and no platform‐specific hacks, and the
decaying state of our unofficial support for 32‐bit ARM, I think
it is not worth maintaining support for the legacy image format for
this one ancient platform.

If anyone is running a heavily stripped‐down NixOS configuration on
mission‐critical SheevaPlugs using a custom Nix‐free deployment
setup relying on the legacy U‐Boot image format and somehow none
of these kernel changes manage to loudly break their build, hopefully
they’ll at least notice the release notes entry! Otherwise there’s
always JTAG…

2026-06-01 11:12:17 +10:00

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Nixpkgs 26.11 ("Zokor", 2026.11/??)

Highlights

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Backward Incompatibilities

databricks-cli has been updated from 0.290.2 to 1.x.x, the first major release. OAuth tokens for interactive logins (auth_type = databricks-cli) are now stored in the OS-native secure store by default (Secret Service on Linux) instead of ~/.databricks/token-cache.json; cached tokens from older versions are not migrated, so run databricks auth login once per profile after upgrading. To keep the previous file-backed storage, set DATABRICKS_AUTH_STORAGE=plaintext or add auth_storage = plaintext under [__settings__] in ~/.databrickscfg. Additionally, the vector_search_endpoints DABs resource renamed min_qps to target_qps (and the vector-search-endpoints command renamed --min-qps to --target-qps). See the upstream changelog for details.
hurl has been updated to 8.x.x which has some breaking changes. See upstream changelog for details.
python3Packages.django-health-check has been updated to major version 4. See its migration guide and changelog for breaking changes.
libgdata has been removed, as it was archived upstream and relied on the insecure libsoup 2.4.
uhttpmock providing 0.0 ABI was removed. uhttpmock_1_0 providing 1.0 ABI was renamed to uhttpmock and uhttpmock_1_0 was kept as an alias.
The ARMv5 Linux kernel build now uses a standard configuration and generates a standard compressed image instead of the deprecated legacy U‐Boot image format. lib.systems.{examples,platforms}.{sheevaplug,pogoplug4} have been unified into lib.systems.examples.armv5tel-multiplatform. Note that there is no official support for ARMv5 and it is not possible to build even a simple NixOS configuration out of the box.
requireFile now sets meta.license = lib.licenses.unfree by default. Users of requireFile-based derivations that preserve this default will need to explicitly allow their evaluation as described in .
librest providing 0.7 ABI was removed. librest_1_0 providing 1.0 ABI was renamed to librest and librest_1_0 was kept as an alias.

Other Notable Changes

Package-URL (PURL, https://github.com/package-url/purl-spec) metadata identifier has been added for fetchgit, fetchpypi and fetchFromGithub fetchers. mkDerivation has been adjusted to reuse this information. Package-URLs allow reliably identifying and locating software packages. Maintainers of derivations using the adapted fetchers should rely on the drv.src.meta.identifiers.v1.purl default identifier and can enhance their drv.meta.identifiers.v1.purls list once they would like to have additional identifiers. Maintainers using fetchurl for drv.src are urged to adapt their drv.meta.identifiers.purlParts for proper identification.

Nixpkgs Library

Breaking changes

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Deprecations

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Additions and Improvements

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