Nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration. Learn how to make reproducible, declarative and reliable systems.
Nix works a little different here. Rather than declaring partial upgrades as unsupported (like sane distros do), partial upgrades are pretty much impossible due to the way Nix works.
Nixpkgs is a set of packages and you build your NixOS config against a certain revision of this set. Because NixOS configurations are always rebuilt from scratch (modulo memotisation/caching), you cannot end up in a situation where only i.e. Firefox is updated but some other update that also happened in the mean time isn’t included because it all comes from one revision of Nixpkgs.
You can always write your own Nix expressions for packages and it is possible to get some packages from other revisions of Nixpkgs but the former is a ton of work on your part and the latter only works semi-officially.
Nix works a little different here. Rather than declaring partial upgrades as unsupported (like sane distros do), partial upgrades are pretty much impossible due to the way Nix works.
Nixpkgs is a set of packages and you build your NixOS config against a certain revision of this set. Because NixOS configurations are always rebuilt from scratch (modulo memotisation/caching), you cannot end up in a situation where only i.e. Firefox is updated but some other update that also happened in the mean time isn’t included because it all comes from one revision of Nixpkgs.
You can always write your own Nix expressions for packages and it is possible to get some packages from other revisions of Nixpkgs but the former is a ton of work on your part and the latter only works semi-officially.