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+<chapter 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 (October 6, 2006)</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>
+
+</chapter>
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