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authorJohn Ericson <John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems>2020-10-17 17:25:17 +0000
committerJohn Ericson <John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems>2020-10-17 17:25:17 +0000
commit2546c63373149dea1511b892a9911768bd770cac (patch)
tree8766f3de7a9cd344e5b9067f83091ae7a28cfd0c /doc/manual/release-notes/rl-0.10.xml
parent7349f257da8278af9aae35544b15c9a204e2a57b (diff)
parentf66bbd8c7bb1472facf8917e58e3cd4f6ddfa1b5 (diff)
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-<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
- xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
- xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
- version="5.0"
- xml:id="ch-relnotes-0.10">
-
-<title>Release 0.10 (2006-10-06)</title>
-
-<note><para>This version of Nix uses Berkeley DB 4.4 instead of 4.3.
-The database is upgraded automatically, but you should be careful not
-to use old versions of Nix that still use Berkeley DB 4.3. In
-particular, if you use a Nix installed through Nix, you should run
-
-<screen>
-$ nix-store --clear-substitutes</screen>
-
-first.</para></note>
-
-<warning><para>Also, the database schema has changed slighted to fix a
-performance issue (see below). When you run any Nix 0.10 command for
-the first time, the database will be upgraded automatically. This is
-irreversible.</para></warning>
-
-<itemizedlist>
-
-
- <!-- Usability / features -->
-
-
- <listitem><para><command>nix-env</command> usability improvements:
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para>An option <option>--compare-versions</option>
- (or <option>-c</option>) has been added to <command>nix-env
- --query</command> 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 your subscribed
- channels is <literal>nix-env -qc \*</literal>.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-env --query</literal> now takes as
- arguments a list of package names about which to show
- information, just like <option>--install</option>, etc.: for
- example, <literal>nix-env -q gcc</literal>. Note that to show
- all derivations, you need to specify
- <literal>\*</literal>.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-env -i
- <replaceable>pkgname</replaceable></literal> will now install
- the highest available version of
- <replaceable>pkgname</replaceable>, rather than installing all
- available versions (which would probably give collisions)
- (<literal>NIX-31</literal>).</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-env (-i|-u) --dry-run</literal> now
- shows exactly which missing paths will be built or
- substituted.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-env -qa --description</literal>
- shows human-readable descriptions of packages, provided that
- they have a <literal>meta.description</literal> attribute (which
- most packages in Nixpkgs don’t have yet).</para></listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>New language features:
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para>Reference scanning (which happens after each
- build) is much faster and takes a constant amount of
- memory.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>String interpolation. Expressions like
-
-<programlisting>
-"--with-freetype2-library=" + freetype + "/lib"</programlisting>
-
- can now be written as
-
-<programlisting>
-"--with-freetype2-library=${freetype}/lib"</programlisting>
-
- You can write arbitrary expressions within
- <literal>${<replaceable>...</replaceable>}</literal>, not just
- identifiers.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Multi-line string literals.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>String concatenations can now involve
- derivations, as in the example <code>"--with-freetype2-library="
- + freetype + "/lib"</code>. This was not previously possible
- because we need to register that a derivation that uses such a
- string is dependent on <literal>freetype</literal>. The
- evaluator now properly propagates this information.
- Consequently, the subpath operator (<literal>~</literal>) has
- been deprecated.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Default values of function arguments can now
- refer to other function arguments; that is, all arguments are in
- scope in the default values
- (<literal>NIX-45</literal>).</para></listitem>
-
- <!--
- <listitem><para>TODO: domain checks (r5895).</para></listitem>
- -->
-
- <listitem><para>Lots of new built-in primitives, such as
- functions for list manipulation and integer arithmetic. See the
- manual for a complete list. All primops are now available in
- the set <varname>builtins</varname>, allowing one to test for
- the availability of primop in a backwards-compatible
- way.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Real let-expressions: <literal>let x = ...;
- ... z = ...; in ...</literal>.</para></listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>New commands <command>nix-pack-closure</command> and
- <command>nix-unpack-closure</command> than can be used to easily
- 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.</para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>XML support:
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-env -q --xml</literal> prints the
- installed or available packages in an XML representation for
- easy processing by other tools.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-instantiate --eval-only
- --xml</literal> prints an XML representation of the resulting
- term. (The new flag <option>--strict</option> forces ‘deep’
- evaluation of the result, i.e., list elements and attributes are
- evaluated recursively.)</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>In Nix expressions, the primop
- <function>builtins.toXML</function> converts a term to an XML
- representation. This is primarily useful for passing structured
- information to builders.</para></listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>You can now unambiguously specify which derivation to
- build or install in <command>nix-env</command>,
- <command>nix-instantiate</command> and <command>nix-build</command>
- using the <option>--attr</option> / <option>-A</option> flags, which
- takes an attribute name as argument. (Unlike symbolic package names
- such as <literal>subversion-1.4.0</literal>, attribute names in an
- attribute set are unique.) For instance, a quick way to perform a
- test build of a package in Nixpkgs is <literal>nix-build
- pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix -A
- <replaceable>foo</replaceable></literal>. <literal>nix-env -q
- --attr</literal> shows the attribute names corresponding to each
- derivation.</para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>If the top-level Nix expression used by
- <command>nix-env</command>, <command>nix-instantiate</command> or
- <command>nix-build</command> evaluates to a function whose arguments
- all have default values, the function will be called automatically.
- Also, the new command-line switch <option>--arg
- <replaceable>name</replaceable>
- <replaceable>value</replaceable></option> can be used to specify
- function arguments on the command line.</para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-install-package --url
- <replaceable>URL</replaceable></literal> allows a package to be
- installed directly from the given URL.</para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>Nix now works behind an HTTP proxy server; just set
- the standard environment variables <envar>http_proxy</envar>,
- <envar>https_proxy</envar>, <envar>ftp_proxy</envar> or
- <envar>all_proxy</envar> appropriately. Functions such as
- <function>fetchurl</function> in Nixpkgs also respect these
- variables.</para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-build -o
- <replaceable>symlink</replaceable></literal> allows the symlink to
- the build result to be named something other than
- <literal>result</literal>.</para></listitem>
-
-
- <!-- Stability / performance / etc. -->
-
-
- <listitem><para>Platform support:
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para>Support for 64-bit platforms, provided a <link
- xlink:href="http://bugzilla.sen.cwi.nl:8080/show_bug.cgi?id=606">suitably
- patched ATerm library</link> is used. Also, files larger than 2
- GiB are now supported.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Added support for Cygwin (Windows,
- <literal>i686-cygwin</literal>), Mac OS X on Intel
- (<literal>i686-darwin</literal>) and Linux on PowerPC
- (<literal>powerpc-linux</literal>).</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>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
- <literal>build-max-jobs</literal> setting.</para></listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>Garbage collector improvements:
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para>Open files (such as running programs) are now
- used as roots of the garbage collector. This prevents programs
- that have been uninstalled from being garbage collected while
- they are still running. The script that detects these
- additional runtime roots
- (<filename>find-runtime-roots.pl</filename>) is inherently
- system-specific, but it should work on Linux and on all
- platforms that have the <command>lsof</command>
- utility.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-store --gc</literal>
- (a.k.a. <command>nix-collect-garbage</command>) prints out the
- number of bytes freed on standard output. <literal>nix-store
- --gc --print-dead</literal> shows how many bytes would be freed
- by an actual garbage collection.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><literal>nix-collect-garbage -d</literal>
- removes all old generations of <emphasis>all</emphasis> profiles
- before calling the actual garbage collector (<literal>nix-store
- --gc</literal>). This is an easy way to get rid of all old
- packages in the Nix store.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><command>nix-store</command> now has an
- operation <option>--delete</option> to delete specific paths
- from the Nix store. It won’t delete reachable (non-garbage)
- paths unless <option>--ignore-liveness</option> is
- specified.</para></listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para></listitem>
-
-
- <listitem><para>Berkeley DB 4.4’s process registry feature is used
- to recover from crashed Nix processes.</para></listitem>
-
- <!-- <listitem><para>TODO: shared stores.</para></listitem> -->
-
- <listitem><para>A performance issue has been fixed with the
- <literal>referer</literal> table, which stores the inverse of the
- <literal>references</literal> table (i.e., it tells you what store
- paths refer to a given path). Maintaining this table could take a
- quadratic amount of time, as well as a quadratic amount of Berkeley
- DB log file space (in particular when running the garbage collector)
- (<literal>NIX-23</literal>).</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Nix now catches the <literal>TERM</literal> and
- <literal>HUP</literal> signals in addition to the
- <literal>INT</literal> signal. So you can now do a <literal>killall
- nix-store</literal> without triggering a database
- recovery.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><command>bsdiff</command> updated to version
- 4.3.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Substantial performance improvements in expression
- evaluation and <literal>nix-env -qa</literal>, all thanks to <link
- xlink:href="http://valgrind.org/">Valgrind</link>. Memory use has
- been reduced by a factor 8 or so. Big speedup by memoisation of
- path hashing.</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Lots of bug fixes, notably:
-
- <itemizedlist>
-
- <listitem><para>Make sure that the garbage collector can run
- successfully when the disk is full
- (<literal>NIX-18</literal>).</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para><command>nix-env</command> now locks the profile
- to prevent races between concurrent <command>nix-env</command>
- operations on the same profile
- (<literal>NIX-7</literal>).</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Removed misleading messages from
- <literal>nix-env -i</literal> (e.g., <literal>installing
- `foo'</literal> followed by <literal>uninstalling
- `foo'</literal>) (<literal>NIX-17</literal>).</para></listitem>
-
- </itemizedlist>
-
- </para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Nix source distributions are a lot smaller now since
- we no longer include a full copy of the Berkeley DB source
- distribution (but only the bits we need).</para></listitem>
-
- <listitem><para>Header files are now installed so that external
- programs can use the Nix libraries.</para></listitem>
-
-</itemizedlist>
-
-</section>