path: root/doc/release-notes.xml

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<article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
         xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
 <title>Nixpkgs Release Notes</title>
 <section xml:id="release-notes-0.14">
  <title>Release 0.14 (June 4, 2012)</title>

  <para>
   In preparation for the switch from Subversion to Git, this release is mainly the prevent the Nixpkgs version number from going backwards. (This would happen because prerelease version numbers produced for the Git repository are lower than those for the Subversion repository.)
  </para>

  <para>
   Since the last release, there have been thousands of changes and new packages by numerous contributors. For details, see the commit logs.
  </para>
 </section>
 <section xml:id="release-notes-0.13">
  <title>Release 0.13 (February 5, 2010)</title>

  <para>
   As always, there are many changes. Some of the most important updates are:
   <itemizedlist>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Glibc 2.9.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      GCC 4.3.3.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Linux 2.6.32.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      X.org 7.5.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      KDE 4.3.4.
     </para>
    </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>
  </para>
 </section>
 <section xml:id="release-notes-0.12">
  <title>Release 0.12 (April 24, 2009)</title>

  <para>
   There are way too many additions to Nixpkgs since the last release to list here: for example, the number of packages on Linux has increased from 1002 to 2159. However, some specific improvements are worth listing:
   <itemizedlist>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Nixpkgs now has a manual. In particular, it describes the standard build environment in detail.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Major new packages:
      <itemizedlist>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         KDE 4.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         TeXLive.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         VirtualBox.
        </para>
       </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
      … and many others.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Important updates:
      <itemizedlist>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Glibc 2.7.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         GCC 4.2.4.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Linux 2.6.25 — 2.6.28.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Firefox 3.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         X.org 7.3.
        </para>
       </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Support for building derivations in a virtual machine, including RPM and Debian builds in automatically generated VM images. See <filename>pkgs/build-support/vm/default.nix</filename> for details.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Improved support for building Haskell packages.
     </para>
    </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>
  </para>

  <para>
   The following people contributed to this release: Andres Löh, Arie Middelkoop, Armijn Hemel, Eelco Dolstra, Lluís Batlle, Ludovic Courtès, Marc Weber, Mart Kolthof, Martin Bravenboer, Michael Raskin, Nicolas Pierron, Peter Simons, Pjotr Prins, Rob Vermaas, Sander van der Burg, Tobias Hammerschmidt, Valentin David, Wouter den Breejen and Yury G. Kudryashov. In addition, several people contributed patches on the <literal>nix-dev</literal> mailing list.
  </para>
 </section>
 <section xml:id="release-notes-0.11">
  <title>Release 0.11 (September 11, 2007)</title>

  <para>
   This release has the following improvements:
   <itemizedlist>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      The standard build environment (<literal>stdenv</literal>) is now pure on the <literal>x86_64-linux</literal> and <literal>powerpc-linux</literal> platforms, just as on <literal>i686-linux</literal>. (Purity means that building and using the standard environment has no dependencies outside of the Nix store. For instance, it doesn’t require an external C compiler such as <filename>/usr/bin/gcc</filename>.) Also, the statically linked binaries used in the bootstrap process are now automatically reproducible, making it easy to update the bootstrap tools and to add support for other Linux platforms. See <filename>pkgs/stdenv/linux/make-bootstrap-tools.nix</filename> for details.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Hook variables in the generic builder are now executed using the <function>eval</function> shell command. This has a major advantage: you can write hooks directly in Nix expressions. For instance, rather than writing a builder like this:
<programlisting>
source $stdenv/setup

postInstall=postInstall
postInstall() {
    ln -sf gzip $out/bin/gunzip
    ln -sf gzip $out/bin/zcat
}

genericBuild</programlisting>
      (the <literal>gzip</literal> builder), you can just add this attribute to the derivation:
<programlisting>
postInstall = "ln -sf gzip $out/bin/gunzip; ln -sf gzip $out/bin/zcat";</programlisting>
      and so a separate build script becomes unnecessary. This should allow us to get rid of most builders in Nixpkgs.
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      It is now possible to have the generic builder pass arguments to <command>configure</command> and <command>make</command> that contain whitespace. Previously, for example, you could say in a builder,
<programlisting>
configureFlags="CFLAGS=-O0"</programlisting>
      but not
<programlisting>
configureFlags="CFLAGS=-O0 -g"</programlisting>
      since the <literal>-g</literal> would be interpreted as a separate argument to <command>configure</command>. Now you can say
<programlisting>
configureFlagsArray=("CFLAGS=-O0 -g")</programlisting>
      or similarly
<programlisting>
configureFlagsArray=("CFLAGS=-O0 -g" "LDFLAGS=-L/foo -L/bar")</programlisting>
      which does the right thing. Idem for <literal>makeFlags</literal>, <literal>installFlags</literal>, <literal>checkFlags</literal> and <literal>distFlags</literal>.
     </para>
     <para>
      Unfortunately you can't pass arrays to Bash through the environment, so you can't put the array above in a Nix expression, e.g.,
<programlisting>
configureFlagsArray = ["CFLAGS=-O0 -g"];</programlisting>
      since it would just be flattened to a since string. However, you <emphasis>can</emphasis> use the inline hooks described above:
<programlisting>
preConfigure = "configureFlagsArray=(\"CFLAGS=-O0 -g\")";</programlisting>
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      The function <function>fetchurl</function> now has support for two different kinds of mirroring of files. First, it has support for <emphasis>content-addressable mirrors</emphasis>. For example, given the <function>fetchurl</function> call
<programlisting>
fetchurl {
  url = "http://releases.mozilla.org/<replaceable>...</replaceable>/firefox-2.0.0.6-source.tar.bz2";
  sha1 = "eb72f55e4a8bf08e8c6ef227c0ade3d068ba1082";
}</programlisting>
      <function>fetchurl</function> will first try to download this file from <link
  xlink:href="http://tarballs.nixos.org/sha1/eb72f55e4a8bf08e8c6ef227c0ade3d068ba1082"/>. If that file doesn’t exist, it will try the original URL. In general, the “content-addressed” location is <replaceable>mirror</replaceable><literal>/</literal><replaceable>hash-type</replaceable><literal>/</literal><replaceable>hash</replaceable>. There is currently only one content-addressable mirror (<link
  xlink:href="http://tarballs.nixos.org"/>), but more can be specified in the <varname>hashedMirrors</varname> attribute in <filename>pkgs/build-support/fetchurl/mirrors.nix</filename>, or by