nixpkgs/doc/release-notes.xml

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<title>Nixpkgs Release Notes</title>


<section><title>Release 0.11 (TBA)</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 like <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 write 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>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 2.6.20.11.</para></listitem>
      
    </itemizedlist>.

  </para></listitem>

  
  <listitem><para>Major new packages:

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem><para>KDE 3.5.6 Base.</para></listitem>
      
      <listitem><para>Many Linux system packages to support
      NixOS.</para></listitem>
      
    </itemizedlist>

  </para></listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</para>

</section>


<section><title>Release 0.10 (October 12, 2006)</title>

<note><para>This release of Nixpkgs requires <link
xlink:href='http://nix.cs.uu.nl/dist/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 overriden.</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://nix.cs.uu.nl/" />.</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>