Merge pull request #5212 from mkenigs/auto-uid-allocation

Merge master into #3600

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+# Release 0.10 (2006-10-06)
+
+> **Note**
+> 
+> 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
+> 
+>     $ nix-store --clear-substitutes
+> 
+> first.
+
+> **Warning**
+> 
+> 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.
+
+  - `nix-env` usability improvements:
+    
+      - An option `--compare-versions` (or `-c`) 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 your subscribed channels is
+        `nix-env -qc \*`.
+    
+      - `nix-env --query` now takes as arguments a list of package names
+        about which to show information, just like `--install`, 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).
+
+  - New language features:
+    
+      - Reference scanning (which happens after each build) is much
+        faster and takes a constant amount of memory.
+    
+      - String interpolation. Expressions like
+        
+            "--with-freetype2-library=" + freetype + "/lib"
+        
+        can now be written as
+        
+            "--with-freetype2-library=${freetype}/lib"
+        
+        You can write arbitrary expressions within `${...}`, not just
+        identifiers.
+    
+      - Multi-line string literals.
+    
+      - String concatenations can now involve derivations, as in the
+        example `"--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.
+    
+      - 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`).
+    
+      - 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
+        `builtins`, allowing one to test for the availability of primop
+        in a backwards-compatible way.
+    
+      - Real let-expressions: `let x = ...;
+                                                        ... z = ...; in ...`.
+
+  - New commands `nix-pack-closure` and `nix-unpack-closure` 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.
+
+  - XML support:
+    
+      - `nix-env -q --xml` prints the installed or available packages in
+        an XML representation for easy processing by other tools.
+    
+      - `nix-instantiate --eval-only
+                                                        --xml` prints an XML representation of the resulting term. (The
+        new flag `--strict` 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.
+
+  - You can now unambiguously specify which derivation to build or
+    install in `nix-env`, `nix-instantiate` and `nix-build` using the
+    `--attr` / `-A` flags, which takes an attribute name as argument.
+    (Unlike symbolic package names such as `subversion-1.4.0`, attribute
+    names in an attribute set are unique.) For instance, a quick way to
+    perform a test build of a package in Nixpkgs is `nix-build
+            pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix -A
+            foo`. `nix-env -q
+            --attr` shows the attribute names corresponding to each derivation.
+
+  - If the top-level Nix expression used by `nix-env`, `nix-instantiate`
+    or `nix-build` evaluates to a function whose arguments all have
+    default values, the function will be called automatically. Also, the
+    new command-line switch `--arg
+            name
+            value` can be used to specify function arguments on the command
+    line.
+
+  - `nix-install-package --url
+            URL` allows a package to be installed directly from the given URL.
+
+  - Nix now works behind an HTTP proxy server; just set the standard
+    environment variables `http_proxy`, `https_proxy`, `ftp_proxy` or
+    `all_proxy` appropriately. Functions such as `fetchurl` in Nixpkgs
+    also respect these variables.
+
+  - `nix-build -o
+            symlink` allows the symlink to the build result to be named
+    something other than `result`.
+
+  - Platform support:
+    
+      - Support for 64-bit platforms, provided a [suitably patched ATerm
+        library](http://bugzilla.sen.cwi.nl:8080/show_bug.cgi?id=606) is
+        used. Also, files larger than 2 GiB are now supported.
+    
+      - Added support for Cygwin (Windows, `i686-cygwin`), Mac OS X on
+        Intel (`i686-darwin`) and Linux on PowerPC (`powerpc-linux`).
+    
+      - 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.
+
+  - Garbage collector improvements:
+    
+      - 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
+        (`find-runtime-roots.pl`) is inherently system-specific, but it
+        should work on Linux and on all platforms that have the `lsof`
+        utility.
+    
+      - `nix-store --gc` (a.k.a. `nix-collect-garbage`) prints out the
+        number of bytes freed on standard output. `nix-store
+                                                        --gc --print-dead` shows how many bytes would be freed by an
+        actual garbage collection.
+    
+      - `nix-collect-garbage -d` removes all old generations of *all*
+        profiles before calling the actual garbage collector (`nix-store
+                                                        --gc`). This is an easy way to get rid of all old packages in
+        the Nix store.
+    
+      - `nix-store` now has an operation `--delete` to delete specific
+        paths from the Nix store. It won’t delete reachable
+        (non-garbage) paths unless `--ignore-liveness` is specified.
+
+  - Berkeley DB 4.4’s process registry feature is used to recover from
+    crashed Nix processes.
+
+  - A performance issue has been fixed with the `referer` table, which
+    stores the inverse of the `references` 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) (`NIX-23`).
+
+  - Nix now catches the `TERM` and `HUP` signals in addition to the
+    `INT` signal. So you can now do a `killall
+            nix-store` without triggering a database recovery.
+
+  - `bsdiff` updated to version 4.3.
+
+  - Substantial performance improvements in expression evaluation and
+    `nix-env -qa`, all thanks to [Valgrind](http://valgrind.org/).
+    Memory use has been reduced by a factor 8 or so. Big speedup by
+    memoisation of path hashing.
+
+  - Lots of bug fixes, notably:
+    
+      - Make sure that the garbage collector can run successfully when
+        the disk is full (`NIX-18`).
+    
+      - `nix-env` now locks the profile to prevent races between
+        concurrent `nix-env` operations on the same profile (`NIX-7`).
+    
+      - Removed misleading messages from `nix-env -i` (e.g.,
+        ``installing
+                                                        `foo'`` followed by ``uninstalling
+                                                        `foo'``) (`NIX-17`).
+
+  - 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).
+
+  - Header files are now installed so that external programs can use the
+    Nix libraries.