lix/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1.4.xml

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      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
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      version="5.0"
      xml:id="ssec-relnotes-1.4">

<title>Release 1.4 (2013-02-26)</title>

<para>This release fixes a security bug in multi-user operation.  It
was possible for derivations to cause the mode of files outside of the
Nix store to be changed to 444 (read-only but world-readable) by
creating hard links to those files (<link
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/5526a282b5b44e9296e61e07d7d2626a79141ac4">details</link>).</para>

<para>There are also the following improvements:</para>

<itemizedlist>

  <listitem><para>New built-in function:
  <function>builtins.hashString</function>.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Build logs are now stored in
  <filename>/nix/var/log/nix/drvs/<emphasis>XX</emphasis>/</filename>,
  where <emphasis>XX</emphasis> is the first two characters of
  the derivation.  This is useful on machines that keep a lot of build
  logs (such as Hydra servers).</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>The function <function>corepkgs/fetchurl</function>
  can now make the downloaded file executable.  This will allow
  getting rid of all bootstrap binaries in the Nixpkgs source
  tree.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Language change: The expression <literal>"${./path}
  ..."</literal> now evaluates to a string instead of a
  path.</para></listitem>

</itemizedlist>

</section>