nixpkgs/doc/release-notes.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
         xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
 <title>Nixpkgs Release Notes</title>
 <section>
  <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>
  <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>
  <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>
  <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
      setting the <envar>NIX_HASHED_MIRRORS</envar> environment variable to a
      whitespace-separated list of URLs.
     </para>
     <para>
      Second, <function>fetchurl</function> has support for widely-mirrored
      distribution sites such as SourceForge or the Linux kernel archives.
      Given a URL of the form
      <literal>mirror://<replaceable>site</replaceable>/<replaceable>path</replaceable></literal>,
      it will try to download <replaceable>path</replaceable> from a
      configurable list of mirrors for <replaceable>site</replaceable>. (This
      idea was borrowed from Gentoo Linux.) Example:
<programlisting>
fetchurl {
  url = mirror://gnu/gcc/gcc-4.2.0/gcc-core-4.2.0.tar.bz2;
  sha256 = "0ykhzxhr8857dr97z0j9wyybfz1kjr71xk457cfapfw5fjas4ny1";
}</programlisting>
      Currently <replaceable>site</replaceable> can be
      <literal>sourceforge</literal>, <literal>gnu</literal> and
      <literal>kernel</literal>. The list of mirrors is defined in
      <filename>pkgs/build-support/fetchurl/mirrors.nix</filename>. You can
      override the list of mirrors for a particular site by setting the
      environment variable
      <envar>NIX_MIRRORS_<replaceable>site</replaceable></envar>, e.g.
<programlisting>
export NIX_MIRRORS_sourceforge=http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/</programlisting>
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Important updates:
      <itemizedlist>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Glibc 2.5.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         GCC 4.1.2.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Gnome 2.16.3.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         X11R7.2.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Linux 2.6.21.7 and 2.6.22.6.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Emacs 22.1.
        </para>
       </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Major new packages:
      <itemizedlist>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         KDE 3.5.6 Base.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Wine 0.9.43.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         OpenOffice 2.2.1.
        </para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
        <para>
         Many Linux system packages to support NixOS.
        </para>
       </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
     </para>
    </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>
  </para>

  <para>
   The following people contributed to this release: Andres Löh, Arie
   Middelkoop, Armijn Hemel, Eelco Dolstra, Marc Weber, Mart Kolthof, Martin
   Bravenboer, Michael Raskin, Wouter den Breejen and Yury G. Kudryashov.
  </para>
 </section>
 <section>
  <title>Release 0.10 (October 12, 2006)</title>

  <note>
   <para>
    This release of Nixpkgs requires
    <link
xlink:href='http://nixos.org/releases/nix/nix-0.10/'>Nix 0.10</link>
    or higher.
   </para>
  </note>

  <para>
   This release has the following improvements:
  </para>

  <itemizedlist>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     <filename>pkgs/system/all-packages-generic.nix</filename> is gone, we now
     just have <filename>pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix</filename> that
     contains all available packages. This should cause much less confusion
     with users. <filename>all-packages.nix</filename> is a function that by
     default returns packages for the current platform, but you can override
     this by specifying a different <varname>system</varname> argument.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Certain packages in Nixpkgs are now user-configurable through a
     configuration file, i.e., without having to edit the Nix expressions in
     Nixpkgs. For instance, the Firefox provided in the Nixpkgs channel is
     built without the RealPlayer plugin (for legal reasons). Previously, you
     could easily enable RealPlayer support by editing the call to the Firefox
     function in <filename>all-packages.nix</filename>, but such changes are
     not respected when Firefox is subsequently updated through the Nixpkgs
     channel.
    </para>
    <para>
     The Nixpkgs configuration file (found in
     <filename>~/.nixpkgs/config.nix</filename> or through the
     <envar>NIXPKGS_CONFIG</envar> environment variable) is an attribute set
     that contains configuration options that
     <filename>all-packages.nix</filename> reads and uses for certain packages.
     For instance, the following configuration file:
<programlisting>
{
  firefox = {
    enableRealPlayer = true;
  };
}</programlisting>
     persistently enables RealPlayer support in the Firefox build.
    </para>
    <para>
     (Actually, <literal>firefox.enableRealPlayer</literal> is the
     <emphasis>only</emphasis> configuration option currently available, but
     more are sure to be added.)
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Support for new platforms:
     <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        <literal>i686-cygwin</literal>, i.e., Windows (using
        <link xlink:href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</link>). The standard
        environment on <literal>i686-cygwin</literal> by default builds
        binaries for the Cygwin environment (i.e., it uses Cygwin tools and
        produces executables that use the Cygwin library). However, there is
        also a standard environment that produces binaries that use
        <link
      xlink:href="http://www.mingw.org/">MinGW</link>. You can
        use it by calling <filename>all-package.nix</filename> with the
        <varname>stdenvType</varname> argument set to
        <literal>"i686-mingw"</literal>.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        <literal>i686-darwin</literal>, i.e., Mac OS X on Intel CPUs.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        <literal>powerpc-linux</literal>.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        <literal>x86_64-linux</literal>, i.e., Linux on 64-bit AMD/Intel CPUs.
        Unlike <literal>i686-linux</literal>, this platform doesn’t have a
        pure <literal>stdenv</literal> yet.
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </itemizedlist>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     The default compiler is now GCC 4.1.1.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     X11 updated to X.org’s X11R7.1.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Notable new packages:
     <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Opera.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition and the Windows SDK.
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </itemizedlist>
     In total there are now around 809 packages in Nixpkgs.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     It is now <emphasis>much</emphasis> easier to override the default C
     compiler and other tools in <literal>stdenv</literal> for specific
     packages. <filename>all-packages.nix</filename> provides two utility
     functions for this purpose: <function>overrideGCC</function> and
     <function>overrideInStdenv</function>. Both take a
     <literal>stdenv</literal> and return an augmented
     <literal>stdenv</literal>; the formed changes the C compiler, and the
     latter adds additional packages to the front of
     <literal>stdenv</literal>’s initial <envar>PATH</envar>, allowing tools
     to be overridden.
    </para>
    <para>
     For instance, the package <varname>strategoxt</varname> doesn’t build
     with the GNU Make in <literal>stdenv</literal> (version 3.81), so we call
     it with an augmented <literal>stdenv</literal> that uses GNU Make 3.80:
<programlisting>
strategoxt = (import ../development/compilers/strategoxt) {
  inherit fetchurl pkgconfig sdf aterm;
  stdenv = overrideInStdenv stdenv [gnumake380];
};

gnumake380 = <replaceable>...</replaceable>;</programlisting>
     Likewise, there are many packages that don’t compile with the default
     GCC (4.1.1), but that’s easily fixed:
<programlisting>
exult = import ../games/exult {
  inherit fetchurl SDL SDL_mixer zlib libpng unzip;
  stdenv = overrideGCC stdenv gcc34;
};</programlisting>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     It has also become much easier to experiment with changes to the
     <literal>stdenv</literal> setup script (which notably contains the generic
     builder). Since edits to <filename>pkgs/stdenv/generic/setup.sh</filename>
     trigger a rebuild of <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, this was formerly
     quite painful. But now <literal>stdenv</literal> contains a function to
     “regenerate” <literal>stdenv</literal> with a different setup script,
     allowing the use of a different setup script for specific packages:
<programlisting>
pkg = import <replaceable>...</replaceable> {
  stdenv = stdenv.regenerate ./my-setup.sh;
  <replaceable>...</replaceable>
}</programlisting>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Packages can now have a human-readable <emphasis>description</emphasis>
     field. Package descriptions are shown by <literal>nix-env -qa
     --description</literal>. In addition, they’re shown on the Nixpkgs
     release page. A description can be added to a package as follows:
<programlisting>
stdenv.mkDerivation {
  name = "exult-1.2";
  <replaceable>...</replaceable>
  meta = {
    description = "A reimplementation of the Ultima VII game engine";
  };
}</programlisting>
     The <varname>meta</varname> attribute is not passed to the builder, so
     changes to the description do not trigger a rebuild. Additional
     <varname>meta</varname> attributes may be defined in the future (such as
     the URL of the package’s homepage, the license, etc.).
    </para>
   </listitem>
  </itemizedlist>

  <para>
   The following people contributed to this release: Andres Löh, Armijn Hemel,
   Christof Douma, Eelco Dolstra, Eelco Visser, Mart Kolthof, Martin
   Bravenboer, Merijn de Jonge, Rob Vermaas and Roy van den Broek.
  </para>
 </section>
 <section>
  <title>Release 0.9 (January 31, 2006)</title>

  <para>
   There have been zillions of changes since the last release of Nixpkgs. Many
   packages have been added or updated. The following are some of the more
   notable changes:
  </para>

  <itemizedlist>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Distribution files have been moved to
     <link
  xlink:href="http://nixos.org/" />.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     The C library on Linux, Glibc, has been updated to version 2.3.6.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     The default compiler is now GCC 3.4.5. GCC 4.0.2 is also available.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     The old, unofficial Xlibs has been replaced by the official modularised
     X11 distribution from X.org, i.e., X11R7.0. X11R7.0 consists of 287 (!)
     packages, all of which are in Nixpkgs though not all have been tested. It
     is now possible to build a working X server (previously we only had X
     client libraries). We use a fully Nixified X server on NixOS.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     The Sun JDK 5 has been purified, i.e., it doesn’t require any non-Nix
     components such as <filename>/lib/ld-linux.so.2</filename>. This means
     that Java applications such as Eclipse and Azureus can run on NixOS.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Hardware-accelerated OpenGL support, used by games like Quake 3 (which is
     now built from source).
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Improved support for FreeBSD on x86.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Improved Haskell support; e.g., the GHC build is now pure.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Some support for cross-compilation: cross-compiling builds of GCC and
     Binutils, and cross-compiled builds of the C library uClibc.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Notable new packages:
     <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        teTeX, including support for building LaTeX documents using Nix (with
        automatic dependency determination).
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Ruby.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        System-level packages to support NixOS, e.g. Grub, GNU
        <literal>parted</literal> and so on.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        <literal>ecj</literal>, the Eclipse Compiler for Java, so we finally
        have a freely distributable compiler that supports Java 5.0.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        <literal>php</literal>.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        The GIMP.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Inkscape.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        GAIM.
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        <literal>kdelibs</literal>. This allows us to add KDE-based packages
        (such as <literal>kcachegrind</literal>).
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </itemizedlist>
    </para>
   </listitem>
  </itemizedlist>

  <para>
   The following people contributed to this release: Andres Löh, Armijn Hemel,
   Bogdan Dumitriu, Christof Douma, Eelco Dolstra, Eelco Visser, Mart Kolthof,
   Martin Bravenboer, Rob Vermaas and Roy van den Broek.
  </para>
 </section>
 <section>
  <title>Release 0.8 (April 11, 2005)</title>

  <para>
   This release is mostly to remain synchronised with the changed hashing
   scheme in Nix 0.8.
  </para>

  <para>
   Notable updates:
   <itemizedlist>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Adobe Reader 7.0
     </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Various security updates (zlib 1.2.2, etc.)
     </para>
    </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>
  </para>
 </section>
 <section>
  <title>Release 0.7 (March 14, 2005)</title>

  <itemizedlist>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     The bootstrap process for the standard build environment on Linux
     (stdenv-linux) has been improved. It is no longer dependent in its initial
     bootstrap stages on the system Glibc, GCC, and other tools. Rather,
     Nixpkgs contains a statically linked bash and curl, and uses that to
     download other statically linked tools. These are then used to build a
     Glibc and dynamically linked versions of all other tools.
    </para>
    <para>
     This change also makes the bootstrap process faster. For instance, GCC is
     built only once instead of three times.
    </para>
    <para>
     (Contributed by Armijn Hemel.)
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Tarballs used by Nixpkgs are now obtained from the same server that hosts
     Nixpkgs (<link
  xlink:href="http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/" />). This
     reduces the risk of packages being unbuildable due to moved or deleted
     files on various servers.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     There now is a generic mechanism for building Perl modules. See the
     various Perl modules defined in pkgs/system/all-packages-generic.nix.
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Notable new packages:
     <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Qt 3
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        MySQL
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        MythTV
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Mono
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        MonoDevelop (alpha)
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Xine
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </itemizedlist>
    </para>
   </listitem>
   <listitem>
    <para>
     Notable updates:
     <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        GCC 3.4.3
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        Glibc 2.3.4
       </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
       <para>
        GTK 2.6
       </para>
      </listitem>
     </itemizedlist>
    </para>
   </listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
 </section>
</article>