NixOS 25.11 – Feature Freeze & Release Blockers

[jopejoe1]

Hi, we are @jopejoe1 and @leona-ya, the release managers for NixOS 25.11 ("Xantusia").

It's time for this release's Feature Freeze & Release Blockers. To make sure that this is going to be a stable and reliable release, please tell us about any release blockers here and add them to the 25.11 Blockers Project.

For context, the feature freezes are going to start on the following 2 dates:

• 2025-10-04 00:00 UTC 2025-10-11 00:00 UTC Restrict breaking changes to Release Critical Packages
• 2025-10-18 00:00 UTC 2025-10-25 00:00 UTC Restrict all breaking changes

So we encourage all teams to check in now and to mention possible blockers, so that we can get an overview of what's ahead of us.

Check-in

Please comment your status quo and possible issues as soon as possible. We'll check teams once they have checked in.

If you think some subsystem, person or team should be added or removed from this list, update maintainers/team-list.nix and your GitHub team members in time before the next feature freeze announcement.

Core

• Module system: @infinisil @roberth
• NixOS tests: @tfc
• stdenv: @NixOS/stdenv
• systemd: @NixOS/systemd

Platforms

• Darwin: @NixOS/darwin-core
• LoongArch64: @NixOS/loongarch64

Languages Ecosystem

• BEAM: @NixOS/beam @minijackson
• C: @matthewbauer @Mic92
• Coq: @CohenCyril @Zimmi48 @siraben @vbgl @Alizter @stepbrobd
• Dhall: @Gabriella439
• Go: @NixOS/golang
• Haskell: @NixOS/haskell
• Java: @NixOS/java
• lisp: @NixOS/lisp
• lua: @NixOS/lua
• Node.js: @winterqt
• OCaml: @NixOS/ocaml
• Perl: @stigtsp @marcusramberg @zakame
• PHP: @NixOS/php @piotrkwiecinski
• Python: @mweinelt @natsukium
• R: @b-rodrigues @bcdarwin @jbedo @Kupac
• Ruby:
• Rust: @NixOS/rust
• Zig: @figsoda @RossComputerGuy

Compilers, build systems

• Android: @NixOS/android @JohnRTitor
• Bazel: @mboes @uri-canva @avdv @olebedev @groodt @aherrmann @ylecornec @boltzmannrain
• LLVM: @NixOS/llvm

Desktop environments

• Cinnamon: @bobby285271 @mkg20001
• cosmic: @NixOS/cosmic @drakon64
• DDE: @wineee
• Enlightenment: @NixOS/enlightenment
• GNOME: @NixOS/gnome @bobby285271 @dasj19
• Hyprland: @NixOS/hyprland @JohnRTitor
• Lomiri: @OPNA2608
• Lumina: @NixOS/lumina
• LXQt: @NixOS/lxqt
• MATE: @bobby285271 @johannesloetzsch @romildo
• Pantheon: @NixOS/pantheon
• Qt / KDE: @NixOS/qt-kde @ilya-fedin @K900 @LunNova @mjm @NickCao @SuperSandro2000
• Xfce: @bobby285271 @romildo @muscaln

Programs

• ACME: @aanderse @arianvp @emilazy @flokli @m1cr0man
• CloudPosse: @dudymas
• Lix ecosystem: @RaitoBezarius @Qyriad @9999years @lf- @alois31
• Nextcloud: @bachp @britter @dotlambda @Ma27 @provokateurin
• Nix/nix-cli ecosystem: @edolstra @Mic92 @tomberek @roberth @Ericson2314
• nixos-rebuild: @thiagokokada
• PostgreSQL: @thoughtpolice @Ma27 @wolfgangwalther
• SDL: @NixOS/SDL @EvysGarden
• Xen Project Hypervisor: @NixOS/xen-project

Others

• Docs: @NixOS/documentation-team
• Everyone else: @NixOS/nixpkgs-committers
• Geospatial: @NixOS/geospatial @autra @sikmir @imincik
• Marketing: @tomberek

[jopejoe1]

More mentions:

Desktop environments

Qt / KDE: @SuperSandro2000
Xfce: @muscaln

Programs

ACME: @aanderse @arianvp @emilazy @flokli @m1cr0man
CloudPosse: @dudymas
Lix ecosystem: @RaitoBezarius @Qyriad @9999years @lf- @alois31
Nextcloud: @bachp @britter @dotlambda @Ma27 @provokateurin
Nix/nix-cli ecosystem: @edolstra @tomberek @Ericson2314
nixos-rebuild: @thiagokokada
PostgreSQL: @thoughtpolice @Ma27 @wolfgangwalther
SDL: @evysgarden

Others

Geospatial: @autra @l0b0
Marketing: @tomberek

[nixos-discourse]

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

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/let-s-have-a-great-25-11-release-cycle/69475/3

[emilazy]

We’ve landed LLVM 21 and CMake 4 for the upcoming staging-next. Not clear to me yet whether we are going to try and do GCC 15. I don’t think we have any other planned significant breaking changes to the core build environment.

On the Darwin side, we expect to bump the minimum version and default SDK to macOS 14, update the source releases, and hopefully land Swift 5.10 as an interim bump while the Swift rework is being polished off for 26.05. We already switched to the system C++ library for the upcoming staging-next.

[thiagokokada]

nixos-rebuild-ng looks good to be the default for the next release. Most open issues are feature requests or are issues that already existed in nixos-rebuild.

[K900]

Qt will be a tight squeeze as usual, 6.10 is now scheduled for 2025-10-07, with further delays possible, and Plasma 6.5 will be end of October, though I don't expect that one to be a problem.

[HeitorAugustoLN]

COSMIC is already being updated to beta in #440950, so should be fine by then

[LordGrimmauld]

SDL is in a good shape, no blockers. While sdl2-compat is still in more closures than i would like via ffmpeg, and sdl3 is still somewhat large pulling gtk4 and all its dependencies, SDL is generally very stable and in a good spot to be maintained for the duration of an entire NixOS release cycle.,

[khaneliman]

@teto Can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we have any blockers for the lua ecosystem atm. The only thing I'm not sure about is the timeline on the 0.12 neovim release, I saw that involved a luaJIT bump which has to go through staging and can cause breaking changes.

[ElvishJerricco]

@NixOS/systemd needs to land #427968 but we're blocked on a couple of upstream issues. Hopefully will be easy to resolve.

[ElvishJerricco]

Also, I would very much like to land #435781 but I haven't be able to allocate the time I had intended to over the past couple of months to get it done. I'm hoping to get it done this week though.

[tomodachi94]

@NixOS/java would like to remove Javas 23 and 24, as well as Gradle 7. These are all end-of-life.

[SigmaSquadron]

@NixOS/xen-project: No blockers for the Xen Project Hypervisor. We're dropping support for version 4.19 and shipping 4.20 on NixOS 25.11.

NixOS 26.05 will get Xen 4.21 when it's released.

[l0b0]

• Geospatial: @NixOS/geospatial @autra @l0b0[ ] Marketing: @tomberek

For the Geospatial team you should probably ping @imincik instead of me - he's the one doing the real work. (I'm mostly an observer since leaving a geospatial-related job.)