Hydra vs SourceHut Builds

Hydra is a continuous integration service for projects based on Nix. It checks out project source periodically or continuously, builds it, runs tests, and produces reports. Work is organized into jobsets whose inputs can trigger builds when they change; jobsets can also depend on one another. Flake jobsets are supported when their outputs expose a hydraJobs attribute set. Jobs can produce packages, ISO images, or tarballs, and jobset inputs can use Git checkout sources. Hydra also provides a JSON API. It is aimed at Nix and NixOS package developers, not people who only need to use NixOS. Hydra is open source under GPL-3.0 and listed at free. It is self-hosted, with no hosted option listed, and running it is currently supported only on NixOS; the repository recommends the NixOS module for production. Flake evaluation is restricted from accessing files outside the Nix store. Some state is stored in the database, so backups are needed, and the wiki reports that hydra-queue-runner can sometimes leave queued builds unscheduled.

SourceHut Builds has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.