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nixpkgs > aur (programming.dev)
submitted 1 day ago by danhab99@programming.dev to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/52191489

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[-] juipeltje@lemmy.world 13 points 23 hours ago

It's possible, but at the very least someone glances over the derivation since it's part of the actual nixpkgs repo right? AUR on the other hand is a wild west.

[-] basxto@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 8 hours ago

is a wild west.

I prefer to call it anarchy

[-] kevincox@lemmy.ml 6 points 17 hours ago

Yes, on one hand every commit to nixpkgs needs review (to some degree) on the other hand there are far too many committers to nixpkgs.

There are also gaps such as the bots to auto-merge packages with maintainer approval, so a simple attack looks like this:

  1. Submit a package with you as a maintainer.
  2. Create a new GitHub account and send a malicious update to that package.
  3. Use a bot to merge with maintainer approval.

So nixpkgs is better than the AUR, but it isn't great and unlike Arch has no separate official repos.

[-] RustyNova@lemmy.world 14 points 22 hours ago

Yeah if the url is https://i_hack.you/ yeah that will be easy to spot. But imagine an attacker just to a "patch update", updating the url and hash to the malicious repository, and use a typo squatted domain/repository, that will make it harder to spot.

[-] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 12 points 21 hours ago

No, it would actually be quite easy to spot.

Nixpkgs templates the source code url fro the url, and then it injects a variable

Here is an example from bash:

pname = "bash${lib.optionalString interactive "-interactive"}";
    version = "5.3${fa.patch_suffix}";
    patch_suffix = "p${toString (builtins.length upstreamPatches)}";

    src = fetchurl {
      url = "mirror://gnu/bash/bash-$%7Blib.removeSuffix fa.patch_suffix fa.version}.tar.gz";
      hash = "sha256-DVzYaWX4aaJs9k9Lcb57lvkKO6iz104n6OnZ1VUPMbo=";
    };

If the url were to be changed, it would show up as a change in git when someone is reviewing before merging.

this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
234 points (100.0% liked)

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