Currently, our release process of a new systemd version is quite complicated.

This is mostly due to the fact that we apply a lot of patches on top of systemd upstream (currently 27!).
We currently track those in a custom https://github.com/nixos/systemd fork of systemd, which is very hard to maintain.

• A separate repo needs separate commits there, very few people can push branches there, and PRs aren't really right
• It's hard to keep track with systemd-stable, and we don't want to rewrite history on pushed branches either.
• Legitimately removed patches (nixos: remove dependencies on local-fs.target #67858, ) accidentially got reintroduced (systemd: make sysinit.target depend on local-fs.target again #69284)
• It's way too many patches in general!

Ideally, we'd end up with like 4-5 downstream patches, have upstreamed the others in a more generic fashion, or just handled differently.

I pushed a WIP of that effort to https://github.com/flokli/nixpkgs/commits/systemd-mainline, would be happy to see some helping hands.

cc @andir @edolstra @Mic92 @arianvp