Would it be possible to install the new nvidia-open drivers from the unstable branch while keeping everything else on stable?
Maybe by switching to unstable, installing nvidia-open, and switch back to stable? And the same for future updates? I’ll probably need to freeze the package version on pacman.conf. It seems cumbersome, but I wonder if it is doable. Is it?
Currently I’m using nvidia-open-beta from AUR and it is working fine. Now I would like to try the one from unstable, but I would like to ask it here first before making a mess.
Good - no?
Why would you even want to to that - if everything is working now?
The driver is the same - it is
or will be
still the very same AUR driver.
No?
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I would not recommend it as each branch has different kernel versions. The only way to do what you propose would be to use the nvidia-open-dkms package instead of the precompiled linuxXXX-nvidia-open package.
However, your proposal will work out better than using the nvidia-open-beta AUR package.
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@Nachlese, yes, everything is working fine. But I just want to test the package being prepared on unstable to provide feedback if needed.
@Yochanan, why do you think my proposal would work better then using the AUR package? The AUR package also provides the DKMS.
Manjaro repo packages (especially drivers) should always be used instead of AUR packages designed for Arch. Keep in mind the AUR is neither officially supported by Arch nor Manjaro.
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Not recommended but there are times you may want/need to do this. Recently I wanted to test the latest mesa version to see if it works in my system. (It still does not.)
I went to the Arch package repo archive as per:
https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/m/mesa/
I downloaded both the newest mesa and the current one I am using. Then I installed the newest as a local package. When I tried a restart and it did not work, I went to a tty command line and changed to my download directory and did a
sudo pacman -U on the older version of mesa that I know worked.
Use at your own risk. 
I should add that mesa version 24.2.1-1 does work on my system just fine, a small upgrade from the 24.1.6 version I was using before. I may make a separate post about this.
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Thanks, @deroberts1.
While that’s not AUR, as @cscs said, it seems like a good approach. Instead of switching branches I can just download the nvidia-open-dkms and other related packages directly from a mirror webpage and install with pacman -U as a local file to test it. It should be much easier and safer than switching branches.
I can keep a copy of the working drivers as a backup to restore via tty if something breaks. This approach allows me to test the nvidia-open drivers on the unstable branch and provide feedback on the forum without having to switch to unstable.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll try it once the drivers get updates again.
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They already did. 
❯ pamac info nvidia-utils | grep Version
Version : 565.77-3
❯ pamac info nvidia-open-beta | grep Version
Version : 1:565.57.01-1
@deroberts1 I know you were trying to be helpful, however your reply has absolutely nothing to do with this topic. Please do not encourage others to put themselves in an unsupported, partial upgrade state.
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I’m currently on nvidia-utils 565.77-1 and nvidia-open-beta-dkms 565.77-1, both from AUR. But I’ll try the ones from the unstable branch as soon as I have some free time to risk!
I’m on test branch and i’m using unstable nvidia drivers
installed it like this:
pacman -U https://mirror.easyname.at/manjaro/pool/overlay/nvidia-open-dkms-565.77-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst https://mirror.easyname.at/manjaro/pool/overlay/nvidia-utils-565.77-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst https://mirror.easyname.at/manjaro/pool/overlay/lib32-nvidia-utils-565.77-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst https://mirror.easyname.at/manjaro/pool/overlay/lib32-opencl-nvidia-565.77-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
But keep in mind to check unstable updates to see if there is some problems, as of now they say that:
Displays connected via DVI may not function on certain graphics cards
But for me open drivers from unstable branch works better then drivers from testing branch, but my second display is connected via usb-c.
Also keep in mind, that if you install it like that, you will not have option to update them with pamac. So if new version or build come out, you will need to update with same method pacman -U and url.
and regular system update will need to enable option: pamac update -a --disable-downgrade