Nix Release Notes
+
+
+
Release 0.10 (TBA)This version of Nix uses Berkeley DB 4.4 instead of 4.3.
@@ -23,19 +26,45 @@ irreversible.
- An option (or
- ) has been added to nix-env
- --query to allow you to compare installed versions of
- packages to available versions, or vice versa. An easy way to see
- if you are up to date with what’s in the channel is nix-env
- -qc \*.
- nix-env --query now takes as
- arguments a list of package names about which to show information,
- just like , etc.: for example,
- nix-env -q gcc. Note that to show all
- derivations, you need to specify
- \*.
+ nix-env usability improvements:
+
+
+
+ An option
+ (or ) has been added to nix-env
+ --query to allow you to compare installed versions of
+ packages to available versions, or vice versa. An easy way to
+ see if you are up to date with what’s in the channel is
+ nix-env -qc \*.
+
+ nix-env --query now takes as
+ arguments a list of package names about which to show
+ information, just like , etc.: for
+ example, nix-env -q gcc. Note that to show
+ all derivations, you need to specify
+ \*.
+
+ nix-env -i
+ pkgname will now install
+ the highest available version of
+ pkgname, rather than installing all
+ available versions (which would probably give collisions)
+ (NIX-31).
+
+ nix-env (-i|-u) --dry-run now
+ shows exactly which missing paths will be built or
+ substituted.
+
+ nix-env -qa --description
+ shows human-readable descriptions of packages, provided that
+ they have a meta.description attribute (which
+ most packages in Nixpkgs don’t have yet).
+
+
+
+
+
Berkeley DB 4.4’s process registry feature is used
to recover from crashed Nix processes.
@@ -62,7 +91,8 @@ irreversible.
Reference scanning (which happens after each
- build) is much faster.
+ build) is much faster and takes a constant amount of
+ memory.
String interpolation. Expressions like
@@ -80,15 +110,23 @@ irreversible.Multi-line string literals.
- TODO: string concatenations involving
- derivations. Consequently, the subpath operator
+ String concatenations can now involve
+ derivations, as in the example above —
+ "--with-freetype2-library=" + freetype + "/lib".
+ This was not previously possible because we need to register
+ that a derivation that uses such a string is dependent on
+ freetype. The evaluator now properly
+ propagates this information. Consequently, the subpath operator
(~) has been deprecated.
- TODO: function argument default values can refer
- to other function arguments
- (NIX-45)
+ Default values of function arguments can now
+ refer to other function arguments; that is, all arguments are in
+ scope in the default values
+ (NIX-45).
+
@@ -108,7 +146,7 @@ irreversible.
New commands nix-pack-closure and
nix-unpack-closure than can be used to easily
- transfer a stire path with all its dependencies to another machine.
+ transfer a store path with all its dependencies to another machine.
Very convenient whenever you have some package on your machine and
you want to copy it somewhere else.
@@ -187,24 +225,30 @@ irreversible.
- TODO: XML support in nix-env -q
- --xml and nix-instantiate --eval-only
- --xml.
+
+ XML support:
- nix-env -i
- pkgname will now install the
- highest available version of pkgname,
- rather than installing all available versions (which would probably
- give collisions) (NIX-31).
+
- nix-env (-i|-u) --dry-run now
- shows exactly which missing paths will be built or
- substituted.
+ nix-env -q --xml prints the
+ installed or available packages in an XML representation for
+ easy processing by other tools.
- nix-env -qa --description shows
- human-readable descriptions of packages, provided that they have a
- meta.description attribute (which most packages
- in Nixpkgs don’t have yet).
+ nix-instantiate --eval-only
+ --xml prints an XML representation of the resulting
+ term. (The new flag forces ‘deep’
+ evaluation of the result, i.e., list elements and attributes are
+ evaluated recursively.)
+
+ In Nix expressions, the primop
+ builtins.toXML converts a term to an XML
+ representation. This is primarily useful for passing structured
+ information to builders.
+
+
+
+
+
Nix source distributions are a lot smaller now since
we no longer include a full copy of the Berkeley DB source
@@ -215,6 +259,11 @@ irreversible.
patched ATerm library is used. Also, files larger than 2 GiB
are now supported.
+ Users of SMP and multicore machines will appreciate
+ that the number of builds to be performed in parallel can now be
+ specified in the configuration file in the
+ build-max-jobs setting.
+
Added support for Cygwin (Windows,
i686-cygwin) and Mac OS X on Intel
(i686-darwin).
@@ -227,6 +276,9 @@ irreversible.
+
+
+
Release 0.9.2 (September 21, 2005)This bug fix release fixes two problems on Mac OS X:
@@ -252,6 +304,8 @@ irreversible.
+
+
Release 0.9.1 (September 20, 2005)This bug fix release addresses a problem with the ATerm library
@@ -262,6 +316,8 @@ when the flag in
+
+
Release 0.9 (September 16, 2005)NOTE: this version of Nix uses Berkeley DB 4.3 instead of 4.2.
@@ -357,6 +413,8 @@ svnService = derivation {
+
+
Release 0.8.1 (April 13, 2005)This is a bug fix release.
@@ -375,6 +433,8 @@ svnService = derivation {
+
+
Release 0.8 (April 11, 2005)NOTE: the hashing scheme in Nix 0.8 changed (as detailed below).
@@ -615,6 +675,8 @@ $ nix-env -f .../i686-linux.nix -i -E 'x: x.firefoxWrapper'
+
+
Release 0.7 (January 12, 2005)
@@ -647,6 +709,8 @@ $ nix-env -f .../i686-linux.nix -i -E 'x: x.firefoxWrapper'
+
+
Release 0.6 (November 14, 2004)
@@ -766,6 +830,8 @@ $ nix-env -f .../i686-linux.nix -i -E 'x: x.firefoxWrapper'
+
+
Release 0.5 and earlierPlease refer to the Subversion commit log messages.
diff --git a/doc/manual/writing-nix-expressions.xml b/doc/manual/writing-nix-expressions.xml
index 5b522ea1d..6f52eb93b 100644
--- a/doc/manual/writing-nix-expressions.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/writing-nix-expressions.xml
@@ -1035,14 +1035,6 @@ weakest binding).
-
- e1 ~ e2
- none
- Construct a reference to a subpath of a derivation.
- E.g., hello ~ "/bin/sh" refers to the
- /bin/sh path within the Hello derivation.
- Useful in specifying derivation attributes.
- e ?
id