nixpkgs-update/doc/interactive-updates.md

Interactive updates

nixpkgs-update supports interactive, single package updates via the update subcommand.

Update tutorial

1. Setup hub and give it your GitHub credentials. Alternatively, if you prefer not to install and configure hub, you can manually create a GitHub token with repo and gist scopes. Provide it to nixpkgs-update by exporting it as the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable (nixpkgs-update only tries to use hub to check out the nixpkgs repo into your XDG cache directory, if you run nixpkgs-update outside of a nixpkgs checkout directory).
2. Go to your local checkout of nixpkgs, and make sure the working directory is clean. Be on a branch you are okay committing to.
3. Run it like: nixpkgs-update update "postman 7.20.0 7.21.2" which mean update the package "postman" from version 7.20.0 to version 7.21.2.
4. It will run the updater, and, if the update builds, it will commit the update and output a message you could use for a pull request.

Flags

--cve

adds CVE vulnerability reporting to the PR message. On first invocation with this option, a CVE database is built. Subsequent invocations will be much faster.

--nixpkgs-review

runs nixpkgs-review, which tries to build all the packages that depend on the one being updated and adds a report.