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diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/release-notes.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/release-notes.md
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/release-notes.md
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+# Nix Release Notes
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.10.1.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.10.1.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e1ed6558a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.10.1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# Release 0.10.1 (2006-10-11)
+
+This release fixes two somewhat obscure bugs that occur when evaluating
+Nix expressions that are stored inside the Nix store (`NIX-67`). These
+do not affect most users.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.10.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.10.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1301add26
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.10.md
@@ -0,0 +1,212 @@
+# 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.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.11.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.11.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d2f4d73aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.11.md
@@ -0,0 +1,167 @@
+# Release 0.11 (2007-12-31)
+
+Nix 0.11 has many improvements over the previous stable release. The
+most important improvement is secure multi-user support. It also
+features many usability enhancements and language extensions, many of
+them prompted by NixOS, the purely functional Linux distribution based
+on Nix. Here is an (incomplete) list:
+
+  - Secure multi-user support. A single Nix store can now be shared
+    between multiple (possible untrusted) users. This is an important
+    feature for NixOS, where it allows non-root users to install
+    software. The old setuid method for sharing a store between multiple
+    users has been removed. Details for setting up a multi-user store
+    can be found in the manual.
+
+  - The new command `nix-copy-closure` gives you an easy and efficient
+    way to exchange software between machines. It copies the missing
+    parts of the closure of a set of store path to or from a remote
+    machine via `ssh`.
+
+  - A new kind of string literal: strings between double single-quotes
+    (`''`) have indentation “intelligently” removed. This allows large
+    strings (such as shell scripts or configuration file fragments in
+    NixOS) to cleanly follow the indentation of the surrounding
+    expression. It also requires much less escaping, since `''` is less
+    common in most languages than `"`.
+
+  - `nix-env` `--set` modifies the current generation of a profile so
+    that it contains exactly the specified derivation, and nothing else.
+    For example, `nix-env -p /nix/var/nix/profiles/browser --set
+            firefox` lets the profile named `browser` contain just Firefox.
+
+  - `nix-env` now maintains meta-information about installed packages in
+    profiles. The meta-information is the contents of the `meta`
+    attribute of derivations, such as `description` or `homepage`. The
+    command `nix-env -q --xml
+            --meta` shows all meta-information.
+
+  - `nix-env` now uses the `meta.priority` attribute of derivations to
+    resolve filename collisions between packages. Lower priority values
+    denote a higher priority. For instance, the GCC wrapper package and
+    the Binutils package in Nixpkgs both have a file `bin/ld`, so
+    previously if you tried to install both you would get a collision.
+    Now, on the other hand, the GCC wrapper declares a higher priority
+    than Binutils, so the former’s `bin/ld` is symlinked in the user
+    environment.
+
+  - `nix-env -i / -u`: instead of breaking package ties by version,
+    break them by priority and version number. That is, if there are
+    multiple packages with the same name, then pick the package with the
+    highest priority, and only use the version if there are multiple
+    packages with the same priority.
+    
+    This makes it possible to mark specific versions/variant in Nixpkgs
+    more or less desirable than others. A typical example would be a
+    beta version of some package (e.g., `gcc-4.2.0rc1`) which should not
+    be installed even though it is the highest version, except when it
+    is explicitly selected (e.g., `nix-env -i
+            gcc-4.2.0rc1`).
+
+  - `nix-env --set-flag` allows meta attributes of installed packages to
+    be modified. There are several attributes that can be usefully
+    modified, because they affect the behaviour of `nix-env` or the user
+    environment build script:
+    
+      - `meta.priority` can be changed to resolve filename clashes (see
+        above).
+    
+      - `meta.keep` can be set to `true` to prevent the package from
+        being upgraded or replaced. Useful if you want to hang on to an
+        older version of a package.
+    
+      - `meta.active` can be set to `false` to “disable” the package.
+        That is, no symlinks will be generated to the files of the
+        package, but it remains part of the profile (so it won’t be
+        garbage-collected). Set it back to `true` to re-enable the
+        package.
+
+  - `nix-env -q` now has a flag `--prebuilt-only` (`-b`) that causes
+    `nix-env` to show only those derivations whose output is already in
+    the Nix store or that can be substituted (i.e., downloaded from
+    somewhere). In other words, it shows the packages that can be
+    installed “quickly”, i.e., don’t need to be built from source. The
+    `-b` flag is also available in `nix-env -i` and `nix-env -u` to
+    filter out derivations for which no pre-built binary is available.
+
+  - The new option `--argstr` (in `nix-env`, `nix-instantiate` and
+    `nix-build`) is like `--arg`, except that the value is a string. For
+    example, `--argstr system
+            i686-linux` is equivalent to `--arg system
+            \"i686-linux\"` (note that `--argstr` prevents annoying quoting
+    around shell arguments).
+
+  - `nix-store` has a new operation `--read-log` (`-l`) `paths` that
+    shows the build log of the given paths.
+
+  - Nix now uses Berkeley DB 4.5. The database is upgraded
+    automatically, but you should be careful not to use old versions of
+    Nix that still use Berkeley DB 4.4.
+
+  - The option `--max-silent-time` (corresponding to the configuration
+    setting `build-max-silent-time`) allows you to set a timeout on
+    builds — if a build produces no output on `stdout` or `stderr` for
+    the given number of seconds, it is terminated. This is useful for
+    recovering automatically from builds that are stuck in an infinite
+    loop.
+
+  - `nix-channel`: each subscribed channel is its own attribute in the
+    top-level expression generated for the channel. This allows
+    disambiguation (e.g. `nix-env
+            -i -A nixpkgs_unstable.firefox`).
+
+  - The substitutes table has been removed from the database. This makes
+    operations such as `nix-pull` and `nix-channel --update` much, much
+    faster.
+
+  - `nix-pull` now supports bzip2-compressed manifests. This speeds up
+    channels.
+
+  - `nix-prefetch-url` now has a limited form of caching. This is used
+    by `nix-channel` to prevent unnecessary downloads when the channel
+    hasn’t changed.
+
+  - `nix-prefetch-url` now by default computes the SHA-256 hash of the
+    file instead of the MD5 hash. In calls to `fetchurl` you should pass
+    the `sha256` attribute instead of `md5`. You can pass either a
+    hexadecimal or a base-32 encoding of the hash.
+
+  - Nix can now perform builds in an automatically generated “chroot”.
+    This prevents a builder from accessing stuff outside of the Nix
+    store, and thus helps ensure purity. This is an experimental
+    feature.
+
+  - The new command `nix-store
+            --optimise` reduces Nix store disk space usage by finding identical
+    files in the store and hard-linking them to each other. It typically
+    reduces the size of the store by something like 25-35%.
+
+  - `~/.nix-defexpr` can now be a directory, in which case the Nix
+    expressions in that directory are combined into an attribute set,
+    with the file names used as the names of the attributes. The command
+    `nix-env
+            --import` (which set the `~/.nix-defexpr` symlink) is removed.
+
+  - Derivations can specify the new special attribute
+    `allowedReferences` to enforce that the references in the output of
+    a derivation are a subset of a declared set of paths. For example,
+    if `allowedReferences` is an empty list, then the output must not
+    have any references. This is used in NixOS to check that generated
+    files such as initial ramdisks for booting Linux don’t have any
+    dependencies.
+
+  - The new attribute `exportReferencesGraph` allows builders access to
+    the references graph of their inputs. This is used in NixOS for
+    tasks such as generating ISO-9660 images that contain a Nix store
+    populated with the closure of certain paths.
+
+  - Fixed-output derivations (like `fetchurl`) can define the attribute
+    `impureEnvVars` to allow external environment variables to be passed
+    to builders. This is used in Nixpkgs to support proxy configuration,
+    among other things.
+
+  - Several new built-in functions: `builtins.attrNames`,
+    `builtins.filterSource`, `builtins.isAttrs`, `builtins.isFunction`,
+    `builtins.listToAttrs`, `builtins.stringLength`, `builtins.sub`,
+    `builtins.substring`, `throw`, `builtins.trace`,
+    `builtins.readFile`.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.12.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.12.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..3a4aba07d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.12.md
@@ -0,0 +1,123 @@
+# Release 0.12 (2008-11-20)
+
+  - Nix no longer uses Berkeley DB to store Nix store metadata. The
+    principal advantages of the new storage scheme are: it works
+    properly over decent implementations of NFS (allowing Nix stores to
+    be shared between multiple machines); no recovery is needed when a
+    Nix process crashes; no write access is needed for read-only
+    operations; no more running out of Berkeley DB locks on certain
+    operations.
+    
+    You still need to compile Nix with Berkeley DB support if you want
+    Nix to automatically convert your old Nix store to the new schema.
+    If you don’t need this, you can build Nix with the `configure`
+    option `--disable-old-db-compat`.
+    
+    After the automatic conversion to the new schema, you can delete the
+    old Berkeley DB files:
+    
+        $ cd /nix/var/nix/db
+        $ rm __db* log.* derivers references referrers reserved validpaths DB_CONFIG
+    
+    The new metadata is stored in the directories `/nix/var/nix/db/info`
+    and `/nix/var/nix/db/referrer`. Though the metadata is stored in
+    human-readable plain-text files, they are not intended to be
+    human-editable, as Nix is rather strict about the format.
+    
+    The new storage schema may or may not require less disk space than
+    the Berkeley DB environment, mostly depending on the cluster size of
+    your file system. With 1 KiB clusters (which seems to be the `ext3`
+    default nowadays) it usually takes up much less space.
+
+  - There is a new substituter that copies paths directly from other
+    (remote) Nix stores mounted somewhere in the filesystem. For
+    instance, you can speed up an installation by mounting some remote
+    Nix store that already has the packages in question via NFS or
+    `sshfs`. The environment variable `NIX_OTHER_STORES` specifies the
+    locations of the remote Nix directories, e.g. `/mnt/remote-fs/nix`.
+
+  - New `nix-store` operations `--dump-db` and `--load-db` to dump and
+    reload the Nix database.
+
+  - The garbage collector has a number of new options to allow only some
+    of the garbage to be deleted. The option `--max-freed N` tells the
+    collector to stop after at least *N* bytes have been deleted. The
+    option `--max-links
+            N` tells it to stop after the link count on `/nix/store` has dropped
+    below *N*. This is useful for very large Nix stores on filesystems
+    with a 32000 subdirectories limit (like `ext3`). The option
+    `--use-atime` causes store paths to be deleted in order of ascending
+    last access time. This allows non-recently used stuff to be deleted.
+    The option `--max-atime time` specifies an upper limit to the last
+    accessed time of paths that may be deleted. For instance,
+    
+    ``` 
+        $ nix-store --gc -v --max-atime $(date +%s -d "2 months ago")
+    ```
+    
+    deletes everything that hasn’t been accessed in two months.
+
+  - `nix-env` now uses optimistic profile locking when performing an
+    operation like installing or upgrading, instead of setting an
+    exclusive lock on the profile. This allows multiple `nix-env -i / -u
+    / -e` operations on the same profile in parallel. If a `nix-env`
+    operation sees at the end that the profile was changed in the
+    meantime by another process, it will just restart. This is generally
+    cheap because the build results are still in the Nix store.
+
+  - The option `--dry-run` is now supported by `nix-store -r` and
+    `nix-build`.
+
+  - The information previously shown by `--dry-run` (i.e., which
+    derivations will be built and which paths will be substituted) is
+    now always shown by `nix-env`, `nix-store -r` and `nix-build`. The
+    total download size of substitutable paths is now also shown. For
+    instance, a build will show something like
+    
+        the following derivations will be built:
+          /nix/store/129sbxnk5n466zg6r1qmq1xjv9zymyy7-activate-configuration.sh.drv
+          /nix/store/7mzy971rdm8l566ch8hgxaf89x7lr7ik-upstart-jobs.drv
+          ...
+        the following paths will be downloaded/copied (30.02 MiB):
+          /nix/store/4m8pvgy2dcjgppf5b4cj5l6wyshjhalj-samba-3.2.4
+          /nix/store/7h1kwcj29ip8vk26rhmx6bfjraxp0g4l-libunwind-0.98.6
+          ...
+
+  - Language features:
+    
+      - @-patterns as in Haskell. For instance, in a function definition
+        
+            f = args @ {x, y, z}: ...;
+        
+        `args` refers to the argument as a whole, which is further
+        pattern-matched against the attribute set pattern `{x, y, z}`.
+    
+      - “`...`” (ellipsis) patterns. An attribute set pattern can now
+        say `...` at the end of the attribute name list to specify that
+        the function takes *at least* the listed attributes, while
+        ignoring additional attributes. For instance,
+        
+            {stdenv, fetchurl, fuse, ...}: ...
+        
+        defines a function that accepts any attribute set that includes
+        at least the three listed attributes.
+    
+      - New primops: `builtins.parseDrvName` (split a package name
+        string like `"nix-0.12pre12876"` into its name and version
+        components, e.g. `"nix"` and `"0.12pre12876"`),
+        `builtins.compareVersions` (compare two version strings using
+        the same algorithm that `nix-env` uses), `builtins.length`
+        (efficiently compute the length of a list), `builtins.mul`
+        (integer multiplication), `builtins.div` (integer division).
+
+  - `nix-prefetch-url` now supports `mirror://` URLs, provided that the
+    environment variable `NIXPKGS_ALL` points at a Nixpkgs tree.
+
+  - Removed the commands `nix-pack-closure` and `nix-unpack-closure`.
+    You can do almost the same thing but much more efficiently by doing
+    `nix-store --export
+            $(nix-store -qR paths) > closure` and `nix-store --import <
+            closure`.
+
+  - Lots of bug fixes, including a big performance bug in the handling
+    of `with`-expressions.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.13.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.13.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..13a60e01c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.13.md
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+# Release 0.13 (2009-11-05)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. It has some new features:
+
+  - Syntactic sugar for writing nested attribute sets. Instead of
+    
+        {
+          foo = {
+            bar = 123;
+            xyzzy = true;
+          };
+          a = { b = { c = "d"; }; };
+        }
+    
+    you can write
+    
+        {
+          foo.bar = 123;
+          foo.xyzzy = true;
+          a.b.c = "d";
+        }
+    
+    This is useful, for instance, in NixOS configuration files.
+
+  - Support for Nix channels generated by Hydra, the Nix-based
+    continuous build system. (Hydra generates NAR archives on the fly,
+    so the size and hash of these archives isn’t known in advance.)
+
+  - Support `i686-linux` builds directly on `x86_64-linux` Nix
+    installations. This is implemented using the `personality()`
+    syscall, which causes `uname` to return `i686` in child processes.
+
+  - Various improvements to the `chroot` support. Building in a `chroot`
+    works quite well now.
+
+  - Nix no longer blocks if it tries to build a path and another process
+    is already building the same path. Instead it tries to build another
+    buildable path first. This improves parallelism.
+
+  - Support for large (\> 4 GiB) files in NAR archives.
+
+  - Various (performance) improvements to the remote build mechanism.
+
+  - New primops: `builtins.addErrorContext` (to add a string to stack
+    traces — useful for debugging), `builtins.isBool`,
+    `builtins.isString`, `builtins.isInt`, `builtins.intersectAttrs`.
+
+  - OpenSolaris support (Sander van der Burg).
+
+  - Stack traces are no longer displayed unless the `--show-trace`
+    option is used.
+
+  - The scoping rules for `inherit
+                    (e) ...` in recursive attribute sets have changed. The expression
+    *e* can now refer to the attributes defined in the containing set.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.14.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.14.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9d58f2072
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.14.md
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+# Release 0.14 (2010-02-04)
+
+This release has the following improvements:
+
+  - The garbage collector now starts deleting garbage much faster than
+    before. It no longer determines liveness of all paths in the store,
+    but does so on demand.
+
+  - Added a new operation, `nix-store --query
+                    --roots`, that shows the garbage collector roots that directly or
+    indirectly point to the given store paths.
+
+  - Removed support for converting Berkeley DB-based Nix databases to
+    the new schema.
+
+  - Removed the `--use-atime` and `--max-atime` garbage collector
+    options. They were not very useful in practice.
+
+  - On Windows, Nix now requires Cygwin 1.7.x.
+
+  - A few bug fixes.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.15.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.15.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..48e2a6f1b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.15.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# Release 0.15 (2010-03-17)
+
+This is a bug-fix release. Among other things, it fixes building on Mac
+OS X (Snow Leopard), and improves the contents of `/etc/passwd` and
+`/etc/group` in `chroot` builds.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.16.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.16.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..23ac53786
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.16.md
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+# Release 0.16 (2010-08-17)
+
+This release has the following improvements:
+
+  - The Nix expression evaluator is now much faster in most cases:
+    typically, [3 to 8 times compared to the old
+    implementation](http://www.mail-archive.com/nix-dev@cs.uu.nl/msg04113.html).
+    It also uses less memory. It no longer depends on the ATerm library.
+
+  - Support for configurable parallelism inside builders. Build scripts
+    have always had the ability to perform multiple build actions in
+    parallel (for instance, by running `make -j
+                            2`), but this was not desirable because the number of actions to be
+    performed in parallel was not configurable. Nix now has an option
+    `--cores
+                            N` as well as a configuration setting `build-cores =
+                            N` that causes the environment variable `NIX_BUILD_CORES` to be set
+    to *N* when the builder is invoked. The builder can use this at its
+    discretion to perform a parallel build, e.g., by calling `make -j
+                            N`. In Nixpkgs, this can be enabled on a per-package basis by
+    setting the derivation attribute `enableParallelBuilding` to `true`.
+
+  - `nix-store -q` now supports XML output through the `--xml` flag.
+
+  - Several bug fixes.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.5.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.5.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..5cff2da0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.5.md
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+# Release 0.5 and earlier
+
+Please refer to the Subversion commit log messages.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.6.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.6.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ed2d21583
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.6.md
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+# Release 0.6 (2004-11-14)
+
+  - Rewrite of the normalisation engine.
+    
+      - Multiple builds can now be performed in parallel (option `-j`).
+    
+      - Distributed builds. Nix can now call a shell script to forward
+        builds to Nix installations on remote machines, which may or may
+        not be of the same platform type.
+    
+      - Option `--fallback` allows recovery from broken substitutes.
+    
+      - Option `--keep-going` causes building of other (unaffected)
+        derivations to continue if one failed.
+
+  - Improvements to the garbage collector (i.e., it should actually work
+    now).
+
+  - Setuid Nix installations allow a Nix store to be shared among
+    multiple users.
+
+  - Substitute registration is much faster now.
+
+  - A utility `nix-build` to build a Nix expression and create a symlink
+    to the result int the current directory; useful for testing Nix
+    derivations.
+
+  - Manual updates.
+
+  - `nix-env` changes:
+    
+      - Derivations for other platforms are filtered out (which can be
+        overridden using `--system-filter`).
+    
+      - `--install` by default now uninstall previous derivations with
+        the same name.
+    
+      - `--upgrade` allows upgrading to a specific version.
+    
+      - New operation `--delete-generations` to remove profile
+        generations (necessary for effective garbage collection).
+    
+      - Nicer output (sorted, columnised).
+
+  - More sensible verbosity levels all around (builder output is now
+    shown always, unless `-Q` is given).
+
+  - Nix expression language changes:
+    
+      - New language construct: `with
+                                                        E1;
+                                                        E2` brings all attributes defined in the attribute set *E1* in
+        scope in *E2*.
+    
+      - Added a `map` function.
+    
+      - Various new operators (e.g., string concatenation).
+
+  - Expression evaluation is much faster.
+
+  - An Emacs mode for editing Nix expressions (with syntax highlighting
+    and indentation) has been added.
+
+  - Many bug fixes.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.7.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.7.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d873fe890
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.7.md
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+# Release 0.7 (2005-01-12)
+
+  - Binary patching. When upgrading components using pre-built binaries
+    (through nix-pull / nix-channel), Nix can automatically download and
+    apply binary patches to already installed components instead of full
+    downloads. Patching is “smart”: if there is a *sequence* of patches
+    to an installed component, Nix will use it. Patches are currently
+    generated automatically between Nixpkgs (pre-)releases.
+
+  - Simplifications to the substitute mechanism.
+
+  - Nix-pull now stores downloaded manifests in
+    `/nix/var/nix/manifests`.
+
+  - Metadata on files in the Nix store is canonicalised after builds:
+    the last-modified timestamp is set to 0 (00:00:00 1/1/1970), the
+    mode is set to 0444 or 0555 (readable and possibly executable by
+    all; setuid/setgid bits are dropped), and the group is set to the
+    default. This ensures that the result of a build and an installation
+    through a substitute is the same; and that timestamp dependencies
+    are revealed.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.8.1.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.8.1.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7629f81cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.8.1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# Release 0.8.1 (2005-04-13)
+
+This is a bug fix release.
+
+  - Patch downloading was broken.
+
+  - The garbage collector would not delete paths that had references
+    from invalid (but substitutable) paths.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.8.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.8.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..626c0c92b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.8.md
@@ -0,0 +1,166 @@
+# Release 0.8 (2005-04-11)
+
+NOTE: the hashing scheme in Nix 0.8 changed (as detailed below). As a
+result, `nix-pull` manifests and channels built for Nix 0.7 and below
+will not work anymore. However, the Nix expression language has not
+changed, so you can still build from source. Also, existing user
+environments continue to work. Nix 0.8 will automatically upgrade the
+database schema of previous installations when it is first run.
+
+If you get the error message
+
+    you have an old-style manifest `/nix/var/nix/manifests/[...]'; please
+    delete it
+
+you should delete previously downloaded manifests:
+
+    $ rm /nix/var/nix/manifests/*
+
+If `nix-channel` gives the error message
+
+    manifest `http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/channels/[channel]/MANIFEST'
+    is too old (i.e., for Nix <= 0.7)
+
+then you should unsubscribe from the offending channel (`nix-channel
+--remove
+URL`; leave out `/MANIFEST`), and subscribe to the same URL, with
+`channels` replaced by `channels-v3` (e.g.,
+<http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/channels-v3/nixpkgs-unstable>).
+
+Nix 0.8 has the following improvements:
+
+  - The cryptographic hashes used in store paths are now 160 bits long,
+    but encoded in base-32 so that they are still only 32 characters
+    long (e.g.,
+    `/nix/store/csw87wag8bqlqk7ipllbwypb14xainap-atk-1.9.0`). (This is
+    actually a 160 bit truncation of a SHA-256 hash.)
+
+  - Big cleanups and simplifications of the basic store semantics. The
+    notion of “closure store expressions” is gone (and so is the notion
+    of “successors”); the file system references of a store path are now
+    just stored in the database.
+    
+    For instance, given any store path, you can query its closure:
+    
+        $ nix-store -qR $(which firefox)
+        ... lots of paths ...
+    
+    Also, Nix now remembers for each store path the derivation that
+    built it (the “deriver”):
+    
+        $ nix-store -qR $(which firefox)
+        /nix/store/4b0jx7vq80l9aqcnkszxhymsf1ffa5jd-firefox-1.0.1.drv
+    
+    So to see the build-time dependencies, you can do
+    
+        $ nix-store -qR $(nix-store -qd $(which firefox))
+    
+    or, in a nicer format:
+    
+        $ nix-store -q --tree $(nix-store -qd $(which firefox))
+    
+    File system references are also stored in reverse. For instance, you
+    can query all paths that directly or indirectly use a certain Glibc:
+    
+        $ nix-store -q --referrers-closure \
+            /nix/store/8lz9yc6zgmc0vlqmn2ipcpkjlmbi51vv-glibc-2.3.4
+
+  - The concept of fixed-output derivations has been formalised.
+    Previously, functions such as `fetchurl` in Nixpkgs used a hack
+    (namely, explicitly specifying a store path hash) to prevent changes
+    to, say, the URL of the file from propagating upwards through the
+    dependency graph, causing rebuilds of everything. This can now be
+    done cleanly by specifying the `outputHash` and `outputHashAlgo`
+    attributes. Nix itself checks that the content of the output has the
+    specified hash. (This is important for maintaining certain
+    invariants necessary for future work on secure shared stores.)
+
+  - One-click installation :-) It is now possible to install any
+    top-level component in Nixpkgs directly, through the web — see,
+    e.g., <http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nixpkgs-0.8/>. All you
+    have to do is associate `/nix/bin/nix-install-package` with the MIME
+    type `application/nix-package` (or the extension `.nixpkg`), and
+    clicking on a package link will cause it to be installed, with all
+    appropriate dependencies. If you just want to install some specific
+    application, this is easier than subscribing to a channel.
+
+  - `nix-store -r
+            PATHS` now builds all the derivations PATHS in parallel. Previously
+    it did them sequentially (though exploiting possible parallelism
+    between subderivations). This is nice for build farms.
+
+  - `nix-channel` has new operations `--list` and `--remove`.
+
+  - New ways of installing components into user environments:
+    
+      - Copy from another user environment:
+        
+            $ nix-env -i --from-profile .../other-profile firefox
+    
+      - Install a store derivation directly (bypassing the Nix
+        expression language entirely):
+        
+            $ nix-env -i /nix/store/z58v41v21xd3...-aterm-2.3.1.drv
+        
+        (This is used to implement `nix-install-package`, which is
+        therefore immune to evolution in the Nix expression language.)
+    
+      - Install an already built store path directly:
+        
+            $ nix-env -i /nix/store/hsyj5pbn0d9i...-aterm-2.3.1
+    
+      - Install the result of a Nix expression specified as a
+        command-line argument:
+        
+            $ nix-env -f .../i686-linux.nix -i -E 'x: x.firefoxWrapper'
+        
+        The difference with the normal installation mode is that `-E`
+        does not use the `name` attributes of derivations. Therefore,
+        this can be used to disambiguate multiple derivations with the
+        same name.
+
+  - A hash of the contents of a store path is now stored in the database
+    after a successful build. This allows you to check whether store
+    paths have been tampered with: `nix-store
+            --verify --check-contents`.
+
+  - Implemented a concurrent garbage collector. It is now always safe to
+    run the garbage collector, even if other Nix operations are
+    happening simultaneously.
+    
+    However, there can still be GC races if you use `nix-instantiate`
+    and `nix-store
+                    --realise` directly to build things. To prevent races, use the
+    `--add-root` flag of those commands.
+
+  - The garbage collector now finally deletes paths in the right order
+    (i.e., topologically sorted under the “references” relation), thus
+    making it safe to interrupt the collector without risking a store
+    that violates the closure invariant.
+
+  - Likewise, the substitute mechanism now downloads files in the right
+    order, thus preserving the closure invariant at all times.
+
+  - The result of `nix-build` is now registered as a root of the garbage
+    collector. If the `./result` link is deleted, the GC root disappears
+    automatically.
+
+  - The behaviour of the garbage collector can be changed globally by
+    setting options in `/nix/etc/nix/nix.conf`.
+    
+      - `gc-keep-derivations` specifies whether deriver links should be
+        followed when searching for live paths.
+    
+      - `gc-keep-outputs` specifies whether outputs of derivations
+        should be followed when searching for live paths.
+    
+      - `env-keep-derivations` specifies whether user environments
+        should store the paths of derivations when they are added (thus
+        keeping the derivations alive).
+
+  - New `nix-env` query flags `--drv-path` and `--out-path`.
+
+  - `fetchurl` allows SHA-1 and SHA-256 in addition to MD5. Just specify
+    the attribute `sha1` or `sha256` instead of `md5`.
+
+  - Manual updates.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.1.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.1.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9c20eed1b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Release 0.9.1 (2005-09-20)
+
+This bug fix release addresses a problem with the ATerm library when the
+`--with-aterm` flag in `configure` was *not* used.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.2.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.2.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..0caaf28de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.2.md
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+# Release 0.9.2 (2005-09-21)
+
+This bug fix release fixes two problems on Mac OS X:
+
+  - If Nix was linked against statically linked versions of the ATerm or
+    Berkeley DB library, there would be dynamic link errors at runtime.
+
+  - `nix-pull` and `nix-push` intermittently failed due to race
+    conditions involving pipes and child processes with error messages
+    such as `open2: open(GLOB(0x180b2e4), >&=9) failed: Bad
+            file descriptor at /nix/bin/nix-pull line 77` (issue `NIX-14`).
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..8c3e1b28e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-0.9.md
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+# Release 0.9 (2005-09-16)
+
+NOTE: this version of Nix uses Berkeley DB 4.3 instead of 4.2. The
+database is upgraded automatically, but you should be careful not to use
+old versions of Nix that still use Berkeley DB 4.2. In particular, if
+you use a Nix installed through Nix, you should run
+
+    $ nix-store --clear-substitutes
+
+first.
+
+  - Unpacking of patch sequences is much faster now since we no longer
+    do redundant unpacking and repacking of intermediate paths.
+
+  - Nix now uses Berkeley DB 4.3.
+
+  - The `derivation` primitive is lazier. Attributes of dependent
+    derivations can mutually refer to each other (as long as there are
+    no data dependencies on the `outPath` and `drvPath` attributes
+    computed by `derivation`).
+    
+    For example, the expression `derivation
+            attrs` now evaluates to (essentially)
+    
+        attrs // {
+          type = "derivation";
+          outPath = derivation! attrs;
+          drvPath = derivation! attrs;
+        }
+    
+    where `derivation!` is a primop that does the actual derivation
+    instantiation (i.e., it does what `derivation` used to do). The
+    advantage is that it allows commands such as `nix-env -qa` and
+    `nix-env -i` to be much faster since they no longer need to
+    instantiate all derivations, just the `name` attribute.
+    
+    Also, it allows derivations to cyclically reference each other, for
+    example,
+    
+        webServer = derivation {
+          ...
+          hostName = "svn.cs.uu.nl";
+          services = [svnService];
+        };
+         
+        svnService = derivation {
+          ...
+          hostName = webServer.hostName;
+        };
+    
+    Previously, this would yield a black hole (infinite recursion).
+
+  - `nix-build` now defaults to using `./default.nix` if no Nix
+    expression is specified.
+
+  - `nix-instantiate`, when applied to a Nix expression that evaluates
+    to a function, will call the function automatically if all its
+    arguments have defaults.
+
+  - Nix now uses libtool to build dynamic libraries. This reduces the
+    size of executables.
+
+  - A new list concatenation operator `++`. For example, `[1 2 3] ++
+    [4 5
+            6]` evaluates to `[1 2 3 4 5
+            6]`.
+
+  - Some currently undocumented primops to support low-level build
+    management using Nix (i.e., using Nix as a Make replacement). See
+    the commit messages for `r3578` and `r3580`.
+
+  - Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.0.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.0.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..cdb257787
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.0.md
@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+# Release 1.0 (2012-05-11)
+
+There have been numerous improvements and bug fixes since the previous
+release. Here are the most significant:
+
+  - Nix can now optionally use the Boehm garbage collector. This
+    significantly reduces the Nix evaluator’s memory footprint,
+    especially when evaluating large NixOS system configurations. It can
+    be enabled using the `--enable-gc` configure option.
+
+  - Nix now uses SQLite for its database. This is faster and more
+    flexible than the old *ad hoc* format. SQLite is also used to cache
+    the manifests in `/nix/var/nix/manifests`, resulting in a
+    significant speedup.
+
+  - Nix now has an search path for expressions. The search path is set
+    using the environment variable `NIX_PATH` and the `-I` command line
+    option. In Nix expressions, paths between angle brackets are used to
+    specify files that must be looked up in the search path. For
+    instance, the expression `<nixpkgs/default.nix>` looks for a file
+    `nixpkgs/default.nix` relative to every element in the search path.
+
+  - The new command `nix-build --run-env` builds all dependencies of a
+    derivation, then starts a shell in an environment containing all
+    variables from the derivation. This is useful for reproducing the
+    environment of a derivation for development.
+
+  - The new command `nix-store --verify-path` verifies that the contents
+    of a store path have not changed.
+
+  - The new command `nix-store --print-env` prints out the environment
+    of a derivation in a format that can be evaluated by a shell.
+
+  - Attribute names can now be arbitrary strings. For instance, you can
+    write `{ "foo-1.2" = …; "bla bla" = …; }."bla
+                    bla"`.
+
+  - Attribute selection can now provide a default value using the `or`
+    operator. For instance, the expression `x.y.z or e` evaluates to the
+    attribute `x.y.z` if it exists, and `e` otherwise.
+
+  - The right-hand side of the `?` operator can now be an attribute
+    path, e.g., `attrs ?
+                    a.b.c`.
+
+  - On Linux, Nix will now make files in the Nix store immutable on
+    filesystems that support it. This prevents accidental modification
+    of files in the store by the root user.
+
+  - Nix has preliminary support for derivations with multiple outputs.
+    This is useful because it allows parts of a package to be deployed
+    and garbage-collected separately. For instance, development parts of
+    a package such as header files or static libraries would typically
+    not be part of the closure of an application, resulting in reduced
+    disk usage and installation time.
+
+  - The Nix store garbage collector is faster and holds the global lock
+    for a shorter amount of time.
+
+  - The option `--timeout` (corresponding to the configuration setting
+    `build-timeout`) allows you to set an absolute timeout on builds —
+    if a build runs for more than the given number of seconds, it is
+    terminated. This is useful for recovering automatically from builds
+    that are stuck in an infinite loop but keep producing output, and
+    for which `--max-silent-time` is ineffective.
+
+  - Nix development has moved to GitHub
+    (<https://github.com/NixOS/nix>).
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.1.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.1.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1e658fe15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+# Release 1.1 (2012-07-18)
+
+This release has the following improvements:
+
+  - On Linux, when doing a chroot build, Nix now uses various namespace
+    features provided by the Linux kernel to improve build isolation.
+    Namely:
+    
+      - The private network namespace ensures that builders cannot talk
+        to the outside world (or vice versa): each build only sees a
+        private loopback interface. This also means that two concurrent
+        builds can listen on the same port (e.g. as part of a test)
+        without conflicting with each other.
+    
+      - The PID namespace causes each build to start as PID 1. Processes
+        outside of the chroot are not visible to those on the inside. On
+        the other hand, processes inside the chroot *are* visible from
+        the outside (though with different PIDs).
+    
+      - The IPC namespace prevents the builder from communicating with
+        outside processes using SysV IPC mechanisms (shared memory,
+        message queues, semaphores). It also ensures that all IPC
+        objects are destroyed when the builder exits.
+    
+      - The UTS namespace ensures that builders see a hostname of
+        `localhost` rather than the actual hostname.
+    
+      - The private mount namespace was already used by Nix to ensure
+        that the bind-mounts used to set up the chroot are cleaned up
+        automatically.
+
+  - Build logs are now compressed using `bzip2`. The command `nix-store
+                    -l` decompresses them on the fly. This can be disabled by setting
+    the option `build-compress-log` to `false`.
+
+  - The creation of build logs in `/nix/var/log/nix/drvs` can be
+    disabled by setting the new option `build-keep-log` to `false`. This
+    is useful, for instance, for Hydra build machines.
+
+  - Nix now reserves some space in `/nix/var/nix/db/reserved` to ensure
+    that the garbage collector can run successfully if the disk is full.
+    This is necessary because SQLite transactions fail if the disk is
+    full.
+
+  - Added a basic `fetchurl` function. This is not intended to replace
+    the `fetchurl` in Nixpkgs, but is useful for bootstrapping; e.g., it
+    will allow us to get rid of the bootstrap binaries in the Nixpkgs
+    source tree and download them instead. You can use it by doing
+    `import <nix/fetchurl.nix> { url =
+                    url; sha256 =
+                    "hash"; }`. (Shea Levy)
+
+  - Improved RPM spec file. (Michel Alexandre Salim)
+
+  - Support for on-demand socket-based activation in the Nix daemon with
+    `systemd`.
+
+  - Added a manpage for nix.conf5.
+
+  - When using the Nix daemon, the `-s` flag in `nix-env -qa` is now
+    much faster.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.10.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.10.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..2bb859536
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.10.md
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+# Release 1.10 (2015-09-03)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. It also has a number of new
+features:
+
+  - A number of builtin functions have been added to reduce
+    Nixpkgs/NixOS evaluation time and memory consumption: `all`, `any`,
+    `concatStringsSep`, `foldl’`, `genList`, `replaceStrings`, `sort`.
+
+  - The garbage collector is more robust when the disk is full.
+
+  - Nix supports a new API for building derivations that doesn’t require
+    a `.drv` file to be present on disk; it only requires an in-memory
+    representation of the derivation. This is used by the Hydra
+    continuous build system to make remote builds more efficient.
+
+  - The function `<nix/fetchurl.nix>` now uses a *builtin* builder (i.e.
+    it doesn’t require starting an external process; the download is
+    performed by Nix itself). This ensures that derivation paths don’t
+    change when Nix is upgraded, and obviates the need for ugly hacks to
+    support chroot execution.
+
+  - `--version -v` now prints some configuration information, in
+    particular what compile-time optional features are enabled, and the
+    paths of various directories.
+
+  - Build users have their supplementary groups set correctly.
+
+This release has contributions from Eelco Dolstra, Guillaume Maudoux,
+Iwan Aucamp, Jaka Hudoklin, Kirill Elagin, Ludovic Courtès, Manolis
+Ragkousis, Nicolas B. Pierron and Shea Levy.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.11.10.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.11.10.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d1efe1d0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.11.10.md
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+# Release 1.11.10 (2017-06-12)
+
+This release fixes a security bug in Nix’s “build user” build isolation
+mechanism. Previously, Nix builders had the ability to create setuid
+binaries owned by a `nixbld` user. Such a binary could then be used by
+an attacker to assume a `nixbld` identity and interfere with subsequent
+builds running under the same UID.
+
+To prevent this issue, Nix now disallows builders to create setuid and
+setgid binaries. On Linux, this is done using a seccomp BPF filter. Note
+that this imposes a small performance penalty (e.g. 1% when building GNU
+Hello). Using seccomp, we now also prevent the creation of extended
+attributes and POSIX ACLs since these cannot be represented in the NAR
+format and (in the case of POSIX ACLs) allow bypassing regular Nix store
+permissions. On macOS, the restriction is implemented using the existing
+sandbox mechanism, which now uses a minimal “allow all except the
+creation of setuid/setgid binaries” profile when regular sandboxing is
+disabled. On other platforms, the “build user” mechanism is now
+disabled.
+
+Thanks go to Linus Heckemann for discovering and reporting this bug.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.11.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.11.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fbabdaa2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.11.md
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+# Release 1.11 (2016-01-19)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. It also has a number of new
+features:
+
+  - `nix-prefetch-url` can now download URLs specified in a Nix
+    expression. For example,
+    
+        $ nix-prefetch-url -A hello.src
+    
+    will prefetch the file specified by the `fetchurl` call in the
+    attribute `hello.src` from the Nix expression in the current
+    directory, and print the cryptographic hash of the resulting file on
+    stdout. This differs from `nix-build -A
+                    hello.src` in that it doesn't verify the hash, and is thus useful
+    when you’re updating a Nix expression.
+    
+    You can also prefetch the result of functions that unpack a tarball,
+    such as `fetchFromGitHub`. For example:
+    
+        $ nix-prefetch-url --unpack https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf/archive/0.8.tar.gz
+    
+    or from a Nix expression:
+    
+        $ nix-prefetch-url -A nix-repl.src
+
+  - The builtin function `<nix/fetchurl.nix>` now supports downloading
+    and unpacking NARs. This removes the need to have multiple downloads
+    in the Nixpkgs stdenv bootstrap process (like a separate busybox
+    binary for Linux, or curl/mkdir/sh/bzip2 for Darwin). Now all those
+    files can be combined into a single NAR, optionally compressed using
+    `xz`.
+
+  - Nix now supports SHA-512 hashes for verifying fixed-output
+    derivations, and in `builtins.hashString`.
+
+  - The new flag `--option build-repeat
+                            N` will cause every build to be executed *N*+1 times. If the build
+    output differs between any round, the build is rejected, and the
+    output paths are not registered as valid. This is primarily useful
+    to verify build determinism. (We already had a `--check` option to
+    repeat a previously succeeded build. However, with `--check`,
+    non-deterministic builds are registered in the DB. Preventing that
+    is useful for Hydra to ensure that non-deterministic builds don't
+    end up getting published to the binary cache.)
+
+  - The options `--check` and `--option
+                            build-repeat N`, if they detect a difference between two runs of the
+    same derivation and `-K` is given, will make the output of the other
+    run available under `store-path-check`. This makes it easier to
+    investigate the non-determinism using tools like `diffoscope`, e.g.,
+    
+        $ nix-build pkgs/stdenv/linux -A stage1.pkgs.zlib --check -K
+        error: derivation ‘/nix/store/l54i8wlw2265…-zlib-1.2.8.drv’ may not
+        be deterministic: output ‘/nix/store/11a27shh6n2i…-zlib-1.2.8’
+        differs from ‘/nix/store/11a27shh6n2i…-zlib-1.2.8-check’
+        
+        $ diffoscope /nix/store/11a27shh6n2i…-zlib-1.2.8 /nix/store/11a27shh6n2i…-zlib-1.2.8-check
+        …
+        ├── lib/libz.a
+        │   ├── metadata
+        │   │ @@ -1,15 +1,15 @@
+        │   │ -rw-r--r-- 30001/30000   3096 Jan 12 15:20 2016 adler32.o
+        …
+        │   │ +rw-r--r-- 30001/30000   3096 Jan 12 15:28 2016 adler32.o
+        …
+
+  - Improved FreeBSD support.
+
+  - `nix-env -qa --xml --meta` now prints license information.
+
+  - The maximum number of parallel TCP connections that the binary cache
+    substituter will use has been decreased from 150 to 25. This should
+    prevent upsetting some broken NAT routers, and also improves
+    performance.
+
+  - All "chroot"-containing strings got renamed to "sandbox". In
+    particular, some Nix options got renamed, but the old names are
+    still accepted as lower-priority aliases.
+
+This release has contributions from Anders Claesson, Anthony Cowley,
+Bjørn Forsman, Brian McKenna, Danny Wilson, davidak, Eelco Dolstra,
+Fabian Schmitthenner, FrankHB, Ilya Novoselov, janus, Jim Garrison, John
+Ericson, Jude Taylor, Ludovic Courtès, Manuel Jacob, Mathnerd314, Pascal
+Wittmann, Peter Simons, Philip Potter, Preston Bennes, Rommel M.
+Martinez, Sander van der Burg, Shea Levy, Tim Cuthbertson, Tuomas
+Tynkkynen, Utku Demir and Vladimír Čunát.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.2.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.2.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..25b830955
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.2.md
@@ -0,0 +1,97 @@
+# Release 1.2 (2012-12-06)
+
+This release has the following improvements and changes:
+
+  - Nix has a new binary substituter mechanism: the *binary cache*. A
+    binary cache contains pre-built binaries of Nix packages. Whenever
+    Nix wants to build a missing Nix store path, it will check a set of
+    binary caches to see if any of them has a pre-built binary of that
+    path. The configuration setting `binary-caches` contains a list of
+    URLs of binary caches. For instance, doing
+    
+        $ nix-env -i thunderbird --option binary-caches http://cache.nixos.org
+    
+    will install Thunderbird and its dependencies, using the available
+    pre-built binaries in <http://cache.nixos.org>. The main advantage
+    over the old “manifest”-based method of getting pre-built binaries
+    is that you don’t have to worry about your manifest being in sync
+    with the Nix expressions you’re installing from; i.e., you don’t
+    need to run `nix-pull` to update your manifest. It’s also more
+    scalable because you don’t need to redownload a giant manifest file
+    every time.
+    
+    A Nix channel can provide a binary cache URL that will be used
+    automatically if you subscribe to that channel. If you use the
+    Nixpkgs or NixOS channels (<http://nixos.org/channels>) you
+    automatically get the cache <http://cache.nixos.org>.
+    
+    Binary caches are created using `nix-push`. For details on the
+    operation and format of binary caches, see the `nix-push` manpage.
+    More details are provided in [this nix-dev
+    posting](https://nixos.org/nix-dev/2012-September/009826.html).
+
+  - Multiple output support should now be usable. A derivation can
+    declare that it wants to produce multiple store paths by saying
+    something like
+    
+        outputs = [ "lib" "headers" "doc" ];
+    
+    This will cause Nix to pass the intended store path of each output
+    to the builder through the environment variables `lib`, `headers`
+    and `doc`. Other packages can refer to a specific output by
+    referring to `pkg.output`, e.g.
+    
+        buildInputs = [ pkg.lib pkg.headers ];
+    
+    If you install a package with multiple outputs using `nix-env`, each
+    output path will be symlinked into the user environment.
+
+  - Dashes are now valid as part of identifiers and attribute names.
+
+  - The new operation `nix-store --repair-path` allows corrupted or
+    missing store paths to be repaired by redownloading them. `nix-store
+    --verify --check-contents
+                    --repair` will scan and repair all paths in the Nix store.
+    Similarly, `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-instantiate` and `nix-store
+    --realise` have a `--repair` flag to detect and fix bad paths by
+    rebuilding or redownloading them.
+
+  - Nix no longer sets the immutable bit on files in the Nix store.
+    Instead, the recommended way to guard the Nix store against
+    accidental modification on Linux is to make it a read-only bind
+    mount, like this:
+    
+        $ mount --bind /nix/store /nix/store
+        $ mount -o remount,ro,bind /nix/store
+    
+    Nix will automatically make `/nix/store` writable as needed (using a
+    private mount namespace) to allow modifications.
+
+  - Store optimisation (replacing identical files in the store with hard
+    links) can now be done automatically every time a path is added to
+    the store. This is enabled by setting the configuration option
+    `auto-optimise-store` to `true` (disabled by default).
+
+  - Nix now supports `xz` compression for NARs in addition to `bzip2`.
+    It compresses about 30% better on typical archives and decompresses
+    about twice as fast.
+
+  - Basic Nix expression evaluation profiling: setting the environment
+    variable `NIX_COUNT_CALLS` to `1` will cause Nix to print how many
+    times each primop or function was executed.
+
+  - New primops: `concatLists`, `elem`, `elemAt` and `filter`.
+
+  - The command `nix-copy-closure` has a new flag `--use-substitutes`
+    (`-s`) to download missing paths on the target machine using the
+    substitute mechanism.
+
+  - The command `nix-worker` has been renamed to `nix-daemon`. Support
+    for running the Nix worker in “slave” mode has been removed.
+
+  - The `--help` flag of every Nix command now invokes `man`.
+
+  - Chroot builds are now supported on systemd machines.
+
+This release has contributions from Eelco Dolstra, Florian Friesdorf,
+Mats Erik Andersson and Shea Levy.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.3.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.3.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..0c7b48380
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.3.md
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+# Release 1.3 (2013-01-04)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. When this version is first run on
+Linux, it removes any immutable bits from the Nix store and increases
+the schema version of the Nix store. (The previous release removed
+support for setting the immutable bit; this release clears any remaining
+immutable bits to make certain operations more efficient.)
+
+This release has contributions from Eelco Dolstra and Stuart
+Pernsteiner.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.4.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.4.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d23de71ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.4.md
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# Release 1.4 (2013-02-26)
+
+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
+([details](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/5526a282b5b44e9296e61e07d7d2626a79141ac4)).
+
+There are also the following improvements:
+
+  - New built-in function: `builtins.hashString`.
+
+  - Build logs are now stored in `/nix/var/log/nix/drvs/XX/`, where *XX*
+    is the first two characters of the derivation. This is useful on
+    machines that keep a lot of build logs (such as Hydra servers).
+
+  - The function `corepkgs/fetchurl` can now make the downloaded file
+    executable. This will allow getting rid of all bootstrap binaries in
+    the Nixpkgs source tree.
+
+  - Language change: The expression `"${./path}
+            ..."` now evaluates to a string instead of a path.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.1.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.1.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..72b29518e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Release 1.5.1 (2013-02-28)
+
+The bug fix to the bug fix had a bug itself, of course. But this time it
+will work for sure\!
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.2.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.2.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..508580554
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.2.md
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Release 1.5.2 (2013-05-13)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. It has contributions from Eelco
+Dolstra, Lluís Batlle i Rossell and Shea Levy.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d2ccf8a5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.5.md
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Release 1.5 (2013-02-27)
+
+This is a brown paper bag release to fix a regression introduced by the
+hard link security fix in 1.4.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.6.1.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.6.1.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9bb9bb1f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.6.1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+# Release 1.6.1 (2013-10-28)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. Changes of interest are:
+
+  - Nix 1.6 accidentally changed the semantics of antiquoted paths in
+    strings, such as `"${/foo}/bar"`. This release reverts to the Nix
+    1.5.3 behaviour.
+
+  - Previously, Nix optimised expressions such as `"${expr}"` to *expr*.
+    Thus it neither checked whether *expr* could be coerced to a string,
+    nor applied such coercions. This meant that `"${123}"` evaluatued to
+    `123`, and `"${./foo}"` evaluated to `./foo` (even though `"${./foo}
+    "` evaluates to `"/nix/store/hash-foo "`). Nix now checks the type
+    of antiquoted expressions and applies coercions.
+
+  - Nix now shows the exact position of undefined variables. In
+    particular, undefined variable errors in a `with` previously didn't
+    show *any* position information, so this makes it a lot easier to
+    fix such errors.
+
+  - Undefined variables are now treated consistently. Previously, the
+    `tryEval` function would catch undefined variables inside a `with`
+    but not outside. Now `tryEval` never catches undefined variables.
+
+  - Bash completion in `nix-shell` now works correctly.
+
+  - Stack traces are less verbose: they no longer show calls to builtin
+    functions and only show a single line for each derivation on the
+    call stack.
+
+  - New built-in function: `builtins.typeOf`, which returns the type of
+    its argument as a string.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.6.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.6.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9b83d9274
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.6.md
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+# Release 1.6 (2013-09-10)
+
+In addition to the usual bug fixes, this release has several new
+features:
+
+  - The command `nix-build --run-env` has been renamed to `nix-shell`.
+
+  - `nix-shell` now sources `$stdenv/setup` *inside* the interactive
+    shell, rather than in a parent shell. This ensures that shell
+    functions defined by `stdenv` can be used in the interactive shell.
+
+  - `nix-shell` has a new flag `--pure` to clear the environment, so you
+    get an environment that more closely corresponds to the “real” Nix
+    build.
+
+  - `nix-shell` now sets the shell prompt (`PS1`) to ensure that Nix
+    shells are distinguishable from your regular shells.
+
+  - `nix-env` no longer requires a `*` argument to match all packages,
+    so `nix-env -qa` is equivalent to `nix-env
+                    -qa '*'`.
+
+  - `nix-env -i` has a new flag `--remove-all` (`-r`) to remove all
+    previous packages from the profile. This makes it easier to do
+    declarative package management similar to NixOS’s
+    `environment.systemPackages`. For instance, if you have a
+    specification `my-packages.nix` like this:
+    
+        with import <nixpkgs> {};
+        [ thunderbird
+          geeqie
+          ...
+        ]
+    
+    then after any change to this file, you can run:
+    
+        $ nix-env -f my-packages.nix -ir
+    
+    to update your profile to match the specification.
+
+  - The ‘`with`’ language construct is now more lazy. It only evaluates
+    its argument if a variable might actually refer to an attribute in
+    the argument. For instance, this now works:
+    
+        let
+          pkgs = with pkgs; { foo = "old"; bar = foo; } // overrides;
+          overrides = { foo = "new"; };
+        in pkgs.bar
+    
+    This evaluates to `"new"`, while previously it gave an “infinite
+    recursion” error.
+
+  - Nix now has proper integer arithmetic operators. For instance, you
+    can write `x + y` instead of `builtins.add x y`, or `x <
+                    y` instead of `builtins.lessThan x y`. The comparison operators also
+    work on strings.
+
+  - On 64-bit systems, Nix integers are now 64 bits rather than 32 bits.
+
+  - When using the Nix daemon, the `nix-daemon` worker process now runs
+    on the same CPU as the client, on systems that support setting CPU
+    affinity. This gives a significant speedup on some systems.
+
+  - If a stack overflow occurs in the Nix evaluator, you now get a
+    proper error message (rather than “Segmentation fault”) on some
+    systems.
+
+  - In addition to directories, you can now bind-mount regular files in
+    chroots through the (now misnamed) option `build-chroot-dirs`.
+
+This release has contributions from Domen Kožar, Eelco Dolstra, Florian
+Friesdorf, Gergely Risko, Ivan Kozik, Ludovic Courtès and Shea Levy.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.7.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.7.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..fb18e797d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.7.md
@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+# Release 1.7 (2014-04-11)
+
+In addition to the usual bug fixes, this release has the following new
+features:
+
+  - Antiquotation is now allowed inside of quoted attribute names (e.g.
+    `set."${foo}"`). In the case where the attribute name is just a
+    single antiquotation, the quotes can be dropped (e.g. the above
+    example can be written `set.${foo}`). If an attribute name inside of
+    a set declaration evaluates to `null` (e.g. `{ ${null} = false; }`),
+    then that attribute is not added to the set.
+
+  - Experimental support for cryptographically signed binary caches. See
+    [the commit for
+    details](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/0fdf4da0e979f992db75cc17376e455ddc5a96d8).
+
+  - An experimental new substituter, `download-via-ssh`, that fetches
+    binaries from remote machines via SSH. Specifying the flags
+    `--option
+                    use-ssh-substituter true --option ssh-substituter-hosts
+                    user@hostname` will cause Nix to download binaries from the
+    specified machine, if it has them.
+
+  - `nix-store -r` and `nix-build` have a new flag, `--check`, that
+    builds a previously built derivation again, and prints an error
+    message if the output is not exactly the same. This helps to verify
+    whether a derivation is truly deterministic. For example:
+    
+        $ nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A patchelf
+        …
+        $ nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A patchelf --check
+        …
+        error: derivation `/nix/store/1ipvxs…-patchelf-0.6' may not be deterministic:
+          hash mismatch in output `/nix/store/4pc1dm…-patchelf-0.6.drv'
+
+  - The `nix-instantiate` flags `--eval-only` and `--parse-only` have
+    been renamed to `--eval` and `--parse`, respectively.
+
+  - `nix-instantiate`, `nix-build` and `nix-shell` now have a flag
+    `--expr` (or `-E`) that allows you to specify the expression to be
+    evaluated as a command line argument. For instance, `nix-instantiate
+    --eval -E
+                    '1 + 2'` will print `3`.
+
+  - `nix-shell` improvements:
+    
+      - It has a new flag, `--packages` (or `-p`), that sets up a build
+        environment containing the specified packages from Nixpkgs. For
+        example, the command
+        
+            $ nix-shell -p sqlite xorg.libX11 hello
+        
+        will start a shell in which the given packages are present.
+    
+      - It now uses `shell.nix` as the default expression, falling back
+        to `default.nix` if the former doesn’t exist. This makes it
+        convenient to have a `shell.nix` in your project to set up a
+        nice development environment.
+    
+      - It evaluates the derivation attribute `shellHook`, if set. Since
+        `stdenv` does not normally execute this hook, it allows you to
+        do `nix-shell`-specific setup.
+    
+      - It preserves the user’s timezone setting.
+
+  - In chroots, Nix now sets up a `/dev` containing only a minimal set
+    of devices (such as `/dev/null`). Note that it only does this if you
+    *don’t* have `/dev` listed in your `build-chroot-dirs` setting;
+    otherwise, it will bind-mount the `/dev` from outside the chroot.
+    
+    Similarly, if you don’t have `/dev/pts` listed in
+    `build-chroot-dirs`, Nix will mount a private `devpts` filesystem on
+    the chroot’s `/dev/pts`.
+
+  - New built-in function: `builtins.toJSON`, which returns a JSON
+    representation of a value.
+
+  - `nix-env -q` has a new flag `--json` to print a JSON representation
+    of the installed or available packages.
+
+  - `nix-env` now supports meta attributes with more complex values,
+    such as attribute sets.
+
+  - The `-A` flag now allows attribute names with dots in them, e.g.
+    
+        $ nix-instantiate --eval '<nixos>' -A 'config.systemd.units."nscd.service".text'
+
+  - The `--max-freed` option to `nix-store --gc` now accepts a unit
+    specifier. For example, `nix-store --gc --max-freed
+                    1G` will free up to 1 gigabyte of disk space.
+
+  - `nix-collect-garbage` has a new flag `--delete-older-than` *N*`d`,
+    which deletes all user environment generations older than *N* days.
+    Likewise, `nix-env
+                    --delete-generations` accepts a *N*`d` age limit.
+
+  - Nix now heuristically detects whether a build failure was due to a
+    disk-full condition. In that case, the build is not flagged as
+    “permanently failed”. This is mostly useful for Hydra, which needs
+    to distinguish between permanent and transient build failures.
+
+  - There is a new symbol `__curPos` that expands to an attribute set
+    containing its file name and line and column numbers, e.g. `{ file =
+    "foo.nix"; line = 10;
+                    column = 5; }`. There also is a new builtin function,
+    `unsafeGetAttrPos`, that returns the position of an attribute. This
+    is used by Nixpkgs to provide location information in error
+    messages, e.g.
+    
+        $ nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A libreoffice --argstr system x86_64-darwin
+        error: the package ‘libreoffice-4.0.5.2’ in ‘.../applications/office/libreoffice/default.nix:263’
+          is not supported on ‘x86_64-darwin’
+
+  - The garbage collector is now more concurrent with other Nix
+    processes because it releases certain locks earlier.
+
+  - The binary tarball installer has been improved. You can now install
+    Nix by running:
+    
+        $ bash <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install)
+
+  - More evaluation errors include position information. For instance,
+    selecting a missing attribute will print something like
+    
+        error: attribute `nixUnstabl' missing, at /etc/nixos/configurations/misc/eelco/mandark.nix:216:15
+
+  - The command `nix-setuid-helper` is gone.
+
+  - Nix no longer uses Automake, but instead has a non-recursive, GNU
+    Make-based build system.
+
+  - All installed libraries now have the prefix `libnix`. In particular,
+    this gets rid of `libutil`, which could clash with libraries with
+    the same name from other packages.
+
+  - Nix now requires a compiler that supports C++11.
+
+This release has contributions from Danny Wilson, Domen Kožar, Eelco
+Dolstra, Ian-Woo Kim, Ludovic Courtès, Maxim Ivanov, Petr Rockai,
+Ricardo M. Correia and Shea Levy.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.8.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.8.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..59af363e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.8.md
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+# Release 1.8 (2014-12-14)
+
+  - Breaking change: to address a race condition, the remote build hook
+    mechanism now uses `nix-store
+            --serve` on the remote machine. This requires build slaves to be
+    updated to Nix 1.8.
+
+  - Nix now uses HTTPS instead of HTTP to access the default binary
+    cache, `cache.nixos.org`.
+
+  - `nix-env` selectors are now regular expressions. For instance, you
+    can do
+    
+        $ nix-env -qa '.*zip.*'
+    
+    to query all packages with a name containing `zip`.
+
+  - `nix-store --read-log` can now fetch remote build logs. If a build
+    log is not available locally, then ‘nix-store -l’ will now try to
+    download it from the servers listed in the ‘log-servers’ option in
+    nix.conf. For instance, if you have the configuration option
+    
+        log-servers = http://hydra.nixos.org/log
+    
+    then it will try to get logs from `http://hydra.nixos.org/log/base
+    name of the
+    store path`. This allows you to do things like:
+    
+        $ nix-store -l $(which xterm)
+    
+    and get a log even if `xterm` wasn't built locally.
+
+  - New builtin functions: `attrValues`, `deepSeq`, `fromJSON`,
+    `readDir`, `seq`.
+
+  - `nix-instantiate --eval` now has a `--json` flag to print the
+    resulting value in JSON format.
+
+  - `nix-copy-closure` now uses `nix-store --serve` on the remote side
+    to send or receive closures. This fixes a race condition between
+    `nix-copy-closure` and the garbage collector.
+
+  - Derivations can specify the new special attribute
+    `allowedRequisites`, which has a similar meaning to
+    `allowedReferences`. But instead of only enforcing to explicitly
+    specify the immediate references, it requires the derivation to
+    specify all the dependencies recursively (hence the name,
+    requisites) that are used by the resulting output.
+
+  - On Mac OS X, Nix now handles case collisions when importing closures
+    from case-sensitive file systems. This is mostly useful for running
+    NixOps on Mac OS X.
+
+  - The Nix daemon has new configuration options `allowed-users`
+    (specifying the users and groups that are allowed to connect to the
+    daemon) and `trusted-users` (specifying the users and groups that
+    can perform privileged operations like specifying untrusted binary
+    caches).
+
+  - The configuration option `build-cores` now defaults to the number of
+    available CPU cores.
+
+  - Build users are now used by default when Nix is invoked as root.
+    This prevents builds from accidentally running as root.
+
+  - Nix now includes systemd units and Upstart jobs.
+
+  - Speed improvements to `nix-store
+            --optimise`.
+
+  - Language change: the `==` operator now ignores string contexts (the
+    “dependencies” of a string).
+
+  - Nix now filters out Nix-specific ANSI escape sequences on standard
+    error. They are supposed to be invisible, but some terminals show
+    them anyway.
+
+  - Various commands now automatically pipe their output into the pager
+    as specified by the `PAGER` environment variable.
+
+  - Several improvements to reduce memory consumption in the evaluator.
+
+This release has contributions from Adam Szkoda, Aristid Breitkreuz, Bob
+van der Linden, Charles Strahan, darealshinji, Eelco Dolstra, Gergely
+Risko, Joel Taylor, Ludovic Courtès, Marko Durkovic, Mikey Ariel, Paul
+Colomiets, Ricardo M. Correia, Ricky Elrod, Robert Helgesson, Rob
+Vermaas, Russell O'Connor, Shea Levy, Shell Turner, Sönke Hahn, Steve
+Purcell, Vladimír Čunát and Wout Mertens.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.9.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.9.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..92c6af90b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-1.9.md
@@ -0,0 +1,143 @@
+# Release 1.9 (2015-06-12)
+
+In addition to the usual bug fixes, this release has the following new
+features:
+
+  - Signed binary cache support. You can enable signature checking by
+    adding the following to `nix.conf`:
+    
+        signed-binary-caches = *
+        binary-cache-public-keys = cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=
+    
+    This will prevent Nix from downloading any binary from the cache
+    that is not signed by one of the keys listed in
+    `binary-cache-public-keys`.
+    
+    Signature checking is only supported if you built Nix with the
+    `libsodium` package.
+    
+    Note that while Nix has had experimental support for signed binary
+    caches since version 1.7, this release changes the signature format
+    in a backwards-incompatible way.
+
+  - Automatic downloading of Nix expression tarballs. In various places,
+    you can now specify the URL of a tarball containing Nix expressions
+    (such as Nixpkgs), which will be downloaded and unpacked
+    automatically. For example:
+    
+      - In `nix-env`:
+        
+            $ nix-env -f https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-14.12.tar.gz -iA firefox
+        
+        This installs Firefox from the latest tested and built revision
+        of the NixOS 14.12 channel.
+    
+      - In `nix-build` and `nix-shell`:
+        
+            $ nix-build https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz -A hello
+        
+        This builds GNU Hello from the latest revision of the Nixpkgs
+        master branch.
+    
+      - In the Nix search path (as specified via `NIX_PATH` or `-I`).
+        For example, to start a shell containing the Pan package from a
+        specific version of Nixpkgs:
+        
+            $ nix-shell -p pan -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/8a3eea054838b55aca962c3fbde9c83c102b8bf2.tar.gz
+    
+      - In `nixos-rebuild` (on NixOS):
+        
+            $ nixos-rebuild test -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-unstable.tar.gz
+    
+      - In Nix expressions, via the new builtin function `fetchTarball`:
+        
+            with import (fetchTarball https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-14.12.tar.gz) {}; …
+        
+        (This is not allowed in restricted mode.)
+
+  - `nix-shell` improvements:
+    
+      - `nix-shell` now has a flag `--run` to execute a command in the
+        `nix-shell` environment, e.g. `nix-shell --run make`. This is
+        like the existing `--command` flag, except that it uses a
+        non-interactive shell (ensuring that hitting Ctrl-C won’t drop
+        you into the child shell).
+    
+      - `nix-shell` can now be used as a `#!`-interpreter. This allows
+        you to write scripts that dynamically fetch their own
+        dependencies. For example, here is a Haskell script that, when
+        invoked, first downloads GHC and the Haskell packages on which
+        it depends:
+        
+            #! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
+            #! nix-shell -i runghc -p haskellPackages.ghc haskellPackages.HTTP
+            
+            import Network.HTTP
+            
+            main = do
+              resp <- Network.HTTP.simpleHTTP (getRequest "http://nixos.org/")
+              body <- getResponseBody resp
+              print (take 100 body)
+        
+        Of course, the dependencies are cached in the Nix store, so the
+        second invocation of this script will be much faster.
+
+  - Chroot improvements:
+    
+      - Chroot builds are now supported on Mac OS X (using its sandbox
+        mechanism).
+    
+      - If chroots are enabled, they are now used for all derivations,
+        including fixed-output derivations (such as `fetchurl`). The
+        latter do have network access, but can no longer access the host
+        filesystem. If you need the old behaviour, you can set the
+        option `build-use-chroot` to `relaxed`.
+    
+      - On Linux, if chroots are enabled, builds are performed in a
+        private PID namespace once again. (This functionality was lost
+        in Nix 1.8.)
+    
+      - Store paths listed in `build-chroot-dirs` are now automatically
+        expanded to their closure. For instance, if you want
+        `/nix/store/…-bash/bin/sh` mounted in your chroot as `/bin/sh`,
+        you only need to say `build-chroot-dirs =
+                                                        /bin/sh=/nix/store/…-bash/bin/sh`; it is no longer necessary to
+        specify the dependencies of Bash.
+
+  - The new derivation attribute `passAsFile` allows you to specify that
+    the contents of derivation attributes should be passed via files
+    rather than environment variables. This is useful if you need to
+    pass very long strings that exceed the size limit of the
+    environment. The Nixpkgs function `writeTextFile` uses this.
+
+  - You can now use `~` in Nix file names to refer to your home
+    directory, e.g. `import
+            ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix`.
+
+  - Nix has a new option `restrict-eval` that allows limiting what paths
+    the Nix evaluator has access to. By passing `--option restrict-eval
+    true` to Nix, the evaluator will throw an exception if an attempt is
+    made to access any file outside of the Nix search path. This is
+    primarily intended for Hydra to ensure that a Hydra jobset only
+    refers to its declared inputs (and is therefore reproducible).
+
+  - `nix-env` now only creates a new “generation” symlink in
+    `/nix/var/nix/profiles` if something actually changed.
+
+  - The environment variable `NIX_PAGER` can now be set to override
+    `PAGER`. You can set it to `cat` to disable paging for Nix commands
+    only.
+
+  - Failing `<...>` lookups now show position information.
+
+  - Improved Boehm GC use: we disabled scanning for interior pointers,
+    which should reduce the “`Repeated
+            allocation of very large block`” warnings and associated retention
+    of memory.
+
+This release has contributions from aszlig, Benjamin Staffin, Charles
+Strahan, Christian Theune, Daniel Hahler, Danylo Hlynskyi Daniel
+Peebles, Dan Peebles, Domen Kožar, Eelco Dolstra, Harald van Dijk, Hoang
+Xuan Phu, Jaka Hudoklin, Jeff Ramnani, j-keck, Linquize, Luca Bruno,
+Michael Merickel, Oliver Dunkl, Rob Vermaas, Rok Garbas, Shea Levy,
+Tobias Geerinckx-Rice and William A. Kennington III.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.0.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.0.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9f6d4aa83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.0.md
@@ -0,0 +1,558 @@
+# Release 2.0 (2018-02-22)
+
+The following incompatible changes have been made:
+
+  - The manifest-based substituter mechanism
+    (`download-using-manifests`) has been
+    [removed](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/867967265b80946dfe1db72d40324b4f9af988ed).
+    It has been superseded by the binary cache substituter mechanism
+    since several years. As a result, the following programs have been
+    removed:
+    
+      - `nix-pull`
+    
+      - `nix-generate-patches`
+    
+      - `bsdiff`
+    
+      - `bspatch`
+
+  - The “copy from other stores” substituter mechanism
+    (`copy-from-other-stores` and the `NIX_OTHER_STORES` environment
+    variable) has been removed. It was primarily used by the NixOS
+    installer to copy available paths from the installation medium. The
+    replacement is to use a chroot store as a substituter (e.g.
+    `--substituters /mnt`), or to build into a chroot store (e.g.
+    `--store /mnt --substituters /`).
+
+  - The command `nix-push` has been removed as part of the effort to
+    eliminate Nix's dependency on Perl. You can use `nix copy` instead,
+    e.g. `nix copy
+                    --to file:///tmp/my-binary-cache paths…`
+
+  - The “nested” log output feature (`--log-type
+                    pretty`) has been removed. As a result, `nix-log2xml` was also
+    removed.
+
+  - OpenSSL-based signing has been
+    [removed](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/f435f8247553656774dd1b2c88e9de5d59cab203).
+    This feature was never well-supported. A better alternative is
+    provided by the `secret-key-files` and `trusted-public-keys`
+    options.
+
+  - Failed build caching has been
+    [removed](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/8cffec84859cec8b610a2a22ab0c4d462a9351ff).
+    This feature was introduced to support the Hydra continuous build
+    system, but Hydra no longer uses it.
+
+  - `nix-mode.el` has been removed from Nix. It is now [a separate
+    repository](https://github.com/NixOS/nix-mode) and can be installed
+    through the MELPA package repository.
+
+This release has the following new features:
+
+  - It introduces a new command named `nix`, which is intended to
+    eventually replace all `nix-*` commands with a more consistent and
+    better designed user interface. It currently provides replacements
+    for some (but not all) of the functionality provided by `nix-store`,
+    `nix-build`, `nix-shell -p`, `nix-env -qa`, `nix-instantiate
+    --eval`, `nix-push` and `nix-copy-closure`. It has the following
+    major features:
+    
+      - Unlike the legacy commands, it has a consistent way to refer to
+        packages and package-like arguments (like store paths). For
+        example, the following commands all copy the GNU Hello package
+        to a remote machine:
+        
+            nix copy --to ssh://machine nixpkgs.hello
+        
+            nix copy --to ssh://machine /nix/store/0i2jd68mp5g6h2sa5k9c85rb80sn8hi9-hello-2.10
+        
+            nix copy --to ssh://machine '(with import <nixpkgs> {}; hello)'
+        
+        By contrast, `nix-copy-closure` only accepted store paths as
+        arguments.
+    
+      - It is self-documenting: `--help` shows all available
+        command-line arguments. If `--help` is given after a subcommand,
+        it shows examples for that subcommand. `nix
+                                                                        --help-config` shows all configuration options.
+    
+      - It is much less verbose. By default, it displays a single-line
+        progress indicator that shows how many packages are left to be
+        built or downloaded, and (if there are running builds) the most
+        recent line of builder output. If a build fails, it shows the
+        last few lines of builder output. The full build log can be
+        retrieved using `nix
+                                                                        log`.
+    
+      - It
+        [provides](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/b8283773bd64d7da6859ed520ee19867742a03ba)
+        all `nix.conf` configuration options as command line flags. For
+        example, instead of `--option
+                                                                        http-connections 100` you can write `--http-connections 100`.
+        Boolean options can be written as `--foo` or `--no-foo` (e.g.
+        `--no-auto-optimise-store`).
+    
+      - Many subcommands have a `--json` flag to write results to stdout
+        in JSON format.
+    
+    > **Warning**
+    > 
+    > Please note that the `nix` command is a work in progress and the
+    > interface is subject to change.
+    
+    It provides the following high-level (“porcelain”) subcommands:
+    
+      - `nix build` is a replacement for `nix-build`.
+    
+      - `nix run` executes a command in an environment in which the
+        specified packages are available. It is (roughly) a replacement
+        for `nix-shell
+                                                                        -p`. Unlike that command, it does not execute the command in a
+        shell, and has a flag (`-c`) that specifies the unquoted command
+        line to be executed.
+        
+        It is particularly useful in conjunction with chroot stores,
+        allowing Linux users who do not have permission to install Nix
+        in `/nix/store` to still use binary substitutes that assume
+        `/nix/store`. For example,
+        
+            nix run --store ~/my-nix nixpkgs.hello -c hello --greeting 'Hi everybody!'
+        
+        downloads (or if not substitutes are available, builds) the GNU
+        Hello package into `~/my-nix/nix/store`, then runs `hello` in a
+        mount namespace where `~/my-nix/nix/store` is mounted onto
+        `/nix/store`.
+    
+      - `nix search` replaces `nix-env
+                                                                        -qa`. It searches the available packages for occurrences of a
+        search string in the attribute name, package name or
+        description. Unlike `nix-env -qa`, it has a cache to speed up
+        subsequent searches.
+    
+      - `nix copy` copies paths between arbitrary Nix stores,
+        generalising `nix-copy-closure` and `nix-push`.
+    
+      - `nix repl` replaces the external program `nix-repl`. It provides
+        an interactive environment for evaluating and building Nix
+        expressions. Note that it uses `linenoise-ng` instead of GNU
+        Readline.
+    
+      - `nix upgrade-nix` upgrades Nix to the latest stable version.
+        This requires that Nix is installed in a profile. (Thus it won’t
+        work on NixOS, or if it’s installed outside of the Nix store.)
+    
+      - `nix verify` checks whether store paths are unmodified and/or
+        “trusted” (see below). It replaces `nix-store --verify` and
+        `nix-store
+                                                                        --verify-path`.
+    
+      - `nix log` shows the build log of a package or path. If the
+        build log is not available locally, it will try to obtain it
+        from the configured substituters (such as
+        [cache.nixos.org](https://cache.nixos.org/), which now
+        provides build logs).
+    
+      - `nix edit` opens the source code of a package in your editor.
+    
+      - `nix eval` replaces `nix-instantiate --eval`.
+    
+      - `nix
+                                                                        why-depends` shows why one store path has another in its
+        closure. This is primarily useful to finding the causes of
+        closure bloat. For example,
+        
+            nix why-depends nixpkgs.vlc nixpkgs.libdrm.dev
+        
+        shows a chain of files and fragments of file contents that cause
+        the VLC package to have the “dev” output of `libdrm` in its
+        closure — an undesirable situation.
+    
+      - `nix path-info` shows information about store paths, replacing
+        `nix-store -q`. A useful feature is the option `--closure-size`
+        (`-S`). For example, the following command show the closure
+        sizes of every path in the current NixOS system closure, sorted
+        by size:
+        
+            nix path-info -rS /run/current-system | sort -nk2
+    
+      - `nix optimise-store` replaces `nix-store --optimise`. The main
+        difference is that it has a progress indicator.
+    
+    A number of low-level (“plumbing”) commands are also available:
+    
+      - `nix ls-store` and `nix
+                                                                        ls-nar` list the contents of a store path or NAR file. The
+        former is primarily useful in conjunction with remote stores,
+        e.g.
+        
+            nix ls-store --store https://cache.nixos.org/ -lR /nix/store/0i2jd68mp5g6h2sa5k9c85rb80sn8hi9-hello-2.10
+        
+        lists the contents of path in a binary cache.
+    
+      - `nix cat-store` and `nix
+                                                                        cat-nar` allow extracting a file from a store path or NAR file.
+    
+      - `nix dump-path` writes the contents of a store path to stdout in
+        NAR format. This replaces `nix-store --dump`.
+    
+      - `nix
+                                                                        show-derivation` displays a store derivation in JSON format.
+        This is an alternative to `pp-aterm`.
+    
+      - `nix
+                                                                        add-to-store` replaces `nix-store
+                                                                        --add`.
+    
+      - `nix sign-paths` signs store paths.
+    
+      - `nix copy-sigs` copies signatures from one store to another.
+    
+      - `nix show-config` shows all configuration options and their
+        current values.
+
+  - The store abstraction that Nix has had for a long time to support
+    store access via the Nix daemon has been extended
+    significantly. In particular, substituters (which used to be
+    external programs such as `download-from-binary-cache`) are now
+    subclasses of the abstract `Store` class. This allows many Nix
+    commands to operate on such store types. For example, `nix
+    path-info` shows information about paths in your local Nix store,
+    while `nix path-info --store https://cache.nixos.org/` shows
+    information about paths in the specified binary cache. Similarly,
+    `nix-copy-closure`, `nix-push` and substitution are all instances
+    of the general notion of copying paths between different kinds of
+    Nix stores.
+    
+    Stores are specified using an URI-like syntax, e.g.
+    <https://cache.nixos.org/> or <ssh://machine>. The following store
+    types are supported:
+    
+      - `LocalStore` (stori URI `local` or an absolute path) and the
+        misnamed `RemoteStore` (`daemon`) provide access to a local Nix
+        store, the latter via the Nix daemon. You can use `auto` or the
+        empty string to auto-select a local or daemon store depending on
+        whether you have write permission to the Nix store. It is no
+        longer necessary to set the `NIX_REMOTE` environment variable to
+        use the Nix daemon.
+        
+        As noted above, `LocalStore` now supports chroot builds,
+        allowing the “physical” location of the Nix store (e.g.
+        `/home/alice/nix/store`) to differ from its “logical” location
+        (typically `/nix/store`). This allows non-root users to use Nix
+        while still getting the benefits from prebuilt binaries from
+        [cache.nixos.org](https://cache.nixos.org/).
+    
+      - `BinaryCacheStore` is the abstract superclass of all binary
+        cache stores. It supports writing build logs and NAR content
+        listings in JSON format.
+    
+      - `HttpBinaryCacheStore` (`http://`, `https://`) supports binary
+        caches via HTTP or HTTPS. If the server supports `PUT` requests,
+        it supports uploading store paths via commands such as `nix
+                                                                        copy`.
+    
+      - `LocalBinaryCacheStore` (`file://`) supports binary caches in
+        the local filesystem.
+    
+      - `S3BinaryCacheStore` (`s3://`) supports binary caches stored in
+        Amazon S3, if enabled at compile time.
+    
+      - `LegacySSHStore` (`ssh://`) is used to implement remote builds
+        and `nix-copy-closure`.
+    
+      - `SSHStore` (`ssh-ng://`) supports arbitrary Nix operations on a
+        remote machine via the same protocol used by `nix-daemon`.
+
+  - Security has been improved in various ways:
+    
+      - Nix now stores signatures for local store paths. When paths are
+        copied between stores (e.g., copied from a binary cache to a
+        local store), signatures are propagated.
+        
+        Locally-built paths are signed automatically using the secret
+        keys specified by the `secret-key-files` store option.
+        Secret/public key pairs can be generated using `nix-store
+                                                                        --generate-binary-cache-key`.
+        
+        In addition, locally-built store paths are marked as “ultimately
+        trusted”, but this bit is not propagated when paths are copied
+        between stores.
+    
+      - Content-addressable store paths no longer require signatures —
+        they can be imported into a store by unprivileged users even if
+        they lack signatures.
+    
+      - The command `nix verify` checks whether the specified paths are
+        trusted, i.e., have a certain number of trusted signatures, are
+        ultimately trusted, or are content-addressed.
+    
+      - Substitutions from binary caches
+        [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/ecbc3fedd3d5bdc5a0e1a0a51b29062f2874ac8b)
+        require signatures by default. This was already the case on
+        NixOS.
+    
+      - In Linux sandbox builds, we
+        [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/eba840c8a13b465ace90172ff76a0db2899ab11b)
+        use `/build` instead of `/tmp` as the temporary build directory.
+        This fixes potential security problems when a build accidentally
+        stores its `TMPDIR` in some security-sensitive place, such as an
+        RPATH.
+
+  - *Pure evaluation mode*. With the `--pure-eval` flag, Nix enables a
+    variant of the existing restricted evaluation mode that forbids
+    access to anything that could cause different evaluations of the
+    same command line arguments to produce a different result. This
+    includes builtin functions such as `builtins.getEnv`, but more
+    importantly, *all* filesystem or network access unless a content
+    hash or commit hash is specified. For example, calls to
+    `builtins.fetchGit` are only allowed if a `rev` attribute is
+    specified.
+    
+    The goal of this feature is to enable true reproducibility and
+    traceability of builds (including NixOS system configurations) at
+    the evaluation level. For example, in the future, `nixos-rebuild`
+    might build configurations from a Nix expression in a Git repository
+    in pure mode. That expression might fetch other repositories such as
+    Nixpkgs via `builtins.fetchGit`. The commit hash of the top-level
+    repository then uniquely identifies a running system, and, in
+    conjunction with that repository, allows it to be reproduced or
+    modified.
+
+  - There are several new features to support binary reproducibility
+    (i.e. to help ensure that multiple builds of the same derivation
+    produce exactly the same output). When `enforce-determinism` is set
+    to `false`, it’s [no
+    longer](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/8bdf83f936adae6f2c907a6d2541e80d4120f051)
+    a fatal error if build rounds produce different output. Also, a hook
+    named `diff-hook` is
+    [provided](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/9a313469a4bdea2d1e8df24d16289dc2a172a169)
+    to allow you to run tools such as `diffoscope` when build rounds
+    produce different output.
+
+  - Configuring remote builds is a lot easier now. Provided you are not
+    using the Nix daemon, you can now just specify a remote build
+    machine on the command line, e.g. `--option builders
+                    'ssh://my-mac x86_64-darwin'`. The environment variable
+    `NIX_BUILD_HOOK` has been removed and is no longer needed. The
+    environment variable `NIX_REMOTE_SYSTEMS` is still supported for
+    compatibility, but it is also possible to specify builders in
+    `nix.conf` by setting the option `builders =
+                    @path`.
+
+  - If a fixed-output derivation produces a result with an incorrect
+    hash, the output path is moved to the location corresponding to the
+    actual hash and registered as valid. Thus, a subsequent build of the
+    fixed-output derivation with the correct hash is unnecessary.
+
+  - `nix-shell`
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/ea59f39326c8e9dc42dfed4bcbf597fbce58797c)
+    sets the `IN_NIX_SHELL` environment variable during evaluation and
+    in the shell itself. This can be used to perform different actions
+    depending on whether you’re in a Nix shell or in a regular build.
+    Nixpkgs provides `lib.inNixShell` to check this variable during
+    evaluation.
+
+  - `NIX_PATH` is now lazy, so URIs in the path are only downloaded if
+    they are needed for evaluation.
+
+  - You can now use `channel:` as a short-hand for
+    <https://nixos.org/channels//nixexprs.tar.xz>. For example,
+    `nix-build channel:nixos-15.09 -A hello` will build the GNU Hello
+    package from the `nixos-15.09` channel. In the future, this may
+    use Git to fetch updates more efficiently.
+
+  - When `--no-build-output` is given, the last 10 lines of the build
+    log will be shown if a build fails.
+
+  - Networking has been improved:
+    
+      - HTTP/2 is now supported. This makes binary cache lookups [much
+        more
+        efficient](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/90ad02bf626b885a5dd8967894e2eafc953bdf92).
+    
+      - We now retry downloads on many HTTP errors, making binary caches
+        substituters more resilient to temporary failures.
+    
+      - HTTP credentials can now be configured via the standard `netrc`
+        mechanism.
+    
+      - If S3 support is enabled at compile time, <s3://> URIs are
+        [supported](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/9ff9c3f2f80ba4108e9c945bbfda2c64735f987b)
+        in all places where Nix allows URIs.
+    
+      - Brotli compression is now supported. In particular,
+        [cache.nixos.org](https://cache.nixos.org/) build logs are now compressed
+        using Brotli.
+
+  - `nix-env`
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/b0cb11722626e906a73f10dd9a0c9eea29faf43a)
+    ignores packages with bad derivation names (in particular those
+    starting with a digit or containing a dot).
+
+  - Many configuration options have been renamed, either because they
+    were unnecessarily verbose (e.g. `build-use-sandbox` is now just
+    `sandbox`) or to reflect generalised behaviour (e.g. `binary-caches`
+    is now `substituters` because it allows arbitrary store URIs). The
+    old names are still supported for compatibility.
+
+  - The `max-jobs` option can
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/7251d048fa812d2551b7003bc9f13a8f5d4c95a5)
+    be set to `auto` to use the number of CPUs in the system.
+
+  - Hashes can
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/c0015e87af70f539f24d2aa2bc224a9d8b84276b)
+    be specified in base-64 format, in addition to base-16 and the
+    non-standard base-32.
+
+  - `nix-shell` now uses `bashInteractive` from Nixpkgs, rather than the
+    `bash` command that happens to be in the caller’s `PATH`. This is
+    especially important on macOS where the `bash` provided by the
+    system is seriously outdated and cannot execute `stdenv`’s setup
+    script.
+
+  - Nix can now automatically trigger a garbage collection if free disk
+    space drops below a certain level during a build. This is configured
+    using the `min-free` and `max-free` options.
+
+  - `nix-store -q --roots` and `nix-store --gc --print-roots` now show
+    temporary and in-memory roots.
+
+  - Nix can now be extended with plugins. See the documentation of the
+    `plugin-files` option for more details.
+
+The Nix language has the following new features:
+
+  - It supports floating point numbers. They are based on the C++
+    `float` type and are supported by the existing numerical operators.
+    Export and import to and from JSON and XML works, too.
+
+  - Derivation attributes can now reference the outputs of the
+    derivation using the `placeholder` builtin function. For example,
+    the attribute
+    
+        configureFlags = "--prefix=${placeholder "out"} --includedir=${placeholder "dev"}";
+    
+    will cause the `configureFlags` environment variable to contain the
+    actual store paths corresponding to the `out` and `dev` outputs.
+
+The following builtin functions are new or extended:
+
+  - `builtins.fetchGit` allows Git repositories to be fetched at
+    evaluation time. Thus it differs from the `fetchgit` function in
+    Nixpkgs, which fetches at build time and cannot be used to fetch Nix
+    expressions during evaluation. A typical use case is to import
+    external NixOS modules from your configuration, e.g.
+    
+        imports = [ (builtins.fetchGit https://github.com/edolstra/dwarffs + "/module.nix") ];
+
+  - Similarly, `builtins.fetchMercurial` allows you to fetch Mercurial
+    repositories.
+
+  - `builtins.path` generalises `builtins.filterSource` and path
+    literals (e.g. `./foo`). It allows specifying a store path name that
+    differs from the source path name (e.g. `builtins.path { path =
+    ./foo; name = "bar";
+                    }`) and also supports filtering out unwanted files.
+
+  - `builtins.fetchurl` and `builtins.fetchTarball` now support `sha256`
+    and `name` attributes.
+
+  - `builtins.split` splits a string using a POSIX extended regular
+    expression as the separator.
+
+  - `builtins.partition` partitions the elements of a list into two
+    lists, depending on a Boolean predicate.
+
+  - `<nix/fetchurl.nix>` now uses the content-addressable tarball cache
+    at <http://tarballs.nixos.org/>, just like `fetchurl` in Nixpkgs.
+    (f2682e6e18a76ecbfb8a12c17e3a0ca15c084197)
+
+  - In restricted and pure evaluation mode, builtin functions that
+    download from the network (such as `fetchGit`) are permitted to
+    fetch underneath a list of URI prefixes specified in the option
+    `allowed-uris`.
+
+The Nix build environment has the following changes:
+
+  - Values such as Booleans, integers, (nested) lists and attribute sets
+    can
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/6de33a9c675b187437a2e1abbcb290981a89ecb1)
+    be passed to builders in a non-lossy way. If the special attribute
+    `__structuredAttrs` is set to `true`, the other derivation
+    attributes are serialised in JSON format and made available to the
+    builder via the file `.attrs.json` in the builder’s temporary
+    directory. This obviates the need for `passAsFile` since JSON files
+    have no size restrictions, unlike process environments.
+    
+    [As a convenience to Bash
+    builders](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/2d5b1b24bf70a498e4c0b378704cfdb6471cc699),
+    Nix writes a script named `.attrs.sh` to the builder’s directory
+    that initialises shell variables corresponding to all attributes
+    that are representable in Bash. This includes non-nested
+    (associative) arrays. For example, the attribute `hardening.format =
+                    true` ends up as the Bash associative array element
+    `${hardening[format]}`.
+
+  - Builders can
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/88e6bb76de5564b3217be9688677d1c89101b2a3)
+    communicate what build phase they are in by writing messages to the
+    file descriptor specified in `NIX_LOG_FD`. The current phase is
+    shown by the `nix` progress indicator.
+
+  - In Linux sandbox builds, we
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/a2d92bb20e82a0957067ede60e91fab256948b41)
+    provide a default `/bin/sh` (namely `ash` from BusyBox).
+
+  - In structured attribute mode, `exportReferencesGraph`
+    [exports](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/c2b0d8749f7e77afc1c4b3e8dd36b7ee9720af4a)
+    extended information about closures in JSON format. In particular,
+    it includes the sizes and hashes of paths. This is primarily useful
+    for NixOS image builders.
+
+  - Builds are
+    [now](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/21948deed99a3295e4d5666e027a6ca42dc00b40)
+    killed as soon as Nix receives EOF on the builder’s stdout or
+    stderr. This fixes a bug that allowed builds to hang Nix
+    indefinitely, regardless of timeouts.
+
+  - The `sandbox-paths` configuration option can now specify optional
+    paths by appending a `?`, e.g. `/dev/nvidiactl?` will bind-mount
+    `/dev/nvidiactl` only if it exists.
+
+  - On Linux, builds are now executed in a user namespace with UID 1000
+    and GID 100.
+
+A number of significant internal changes were made:
+
+  - Nix no longer depends on Perl and all Perl components have been
+    rewritten in C++ or removed. The Perl bindings that used to be part
+    of Nix have been moved to a separate package, `nix-perl`.
+
+  - All `Store` classes are now thread-safe. `RemoteStore` supports
+    multiple concurrent connections to the daemon. This is primarily
+    useful in multi-threaded programs such as `hydra-queue-runner`.
+
+This release has contributions from Adrien Devresse, Alexander Ried,
+Alex Cruice, Alexey Shmalko, AmineChikhaoui, Andy Wingo, Aneesh Agrawal,
+Anthony Cowley, Armijn Hemel, aszlig, Ben Gamari, Benjamin Hipple,
+Benjamin Staffin, Benno Fünfstück, Bjørn Forsman, Brian McKenna, Charles
+Strahan, Chase Adams, Chris Martin, Christian Theune, Chris Warburton,
+Daiderd Jordan, Dan Connolly, Daniel Peebles, Dan Peebles, davidak,
+David McFarland, Dmitry Kalinkin, Domen Kožar, Eelco Dolstra, Emery
+Hemingway, Eric Litak, Eric Wolf, Fabian Schmitthenner, Frederik
+Rietdijk, Gabriel Gonzalez, Giorgio Gallo, Graham Christensen, Guillaume
+Maudoux, Harmen, Iavael, James Broadhead, James Earl Douglas, Janus
+Troelsen, Jeremy Shaw, Joachim Schiele, Joe Hermaszewski, Joel Moberg,
+Johannes 'fish' Ziemke, Jörg Thalheim, Jude Taylor, kballou, Keshav
+Kini, Kjetil Orbekk, Langston Barrett, Linus Heckemann, Ludovic Courtès,
+Manav Rathi, Marc Scholten, Markus Hauck, Matt Audesse, Matthew Bauer,
+Matthias Beyer, Matthieu Coudron, N1X, Nathan Zadoks, Neil Mayhew,
+Nicolas B. Pierron, Niklas Hambüchen, Nikolay Amiantov, Ole Jørgen
+Brønner, Orivej Desh, Peter Simons, Peter Stuart, Pyry Jahkola, regnat,
+Renzo Carbonara, Rhys, Robert Vollmert, Scott Olson, Scott R. Parish,
+Sergei Trofimovich, Shea Levy, Sheena Artrip, Spencer Baugh, Stefan
+Junker, Susan Potter, Thomas Tuegel, Timothy Allen, Tristan Hume, Tuomas
+Tynkkynen, tv, Tyson Whitehead, Vladimír Čunát, Will Dietz, wmertens,
+Wout Mertens, zimbatm and Zoran Plesivčak.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.1.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.1.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a9592657b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+# Release 2.1 (2018-09-02)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. It also reduces memory consumption
+in certain situations. In addition, it has the following new features:
+
+  - The Nix installer will no longer default to the Multi-User
+    installation for macOS. You can still instruct the installer to
+    run in multi-user mode.
+
+  - The Nix installer now supports performing a Multi-User
+    installation for Linux computers which are running systemd. You
+    can select a Multi-User installation by passing the `--daemon`
+    flag to the installer: `sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install)
+    --daemon`.
+
+    The multi-user installer cannot handle systems with SELinux. If
+    your system has SELinux enabled, you can force the installer to
+    run in single-user mode.
+
+  - New builtin functions: `builtins.bitAnd`, `builtins.bitOr`,
+    `builtins.bitXor`, `builtins.fromTOML`, `builtins.concatMap`,
+    `builtins.mapAttrs`.
+
+  - The S3 binary cache store now supports uploading NARs larger than 5
+    GiB.
+
+  - The S3 binary cache store now supports uploading to S3-compatible
+    services with the `endpoint` option.
+
+  - The flag `--fallback` is no longer required to recover from
+    disappeared NARs in binary caches.
+
+  - `nix-daemon` now respects `--store`.
+
+  - `nix run` now respects `nix-support/propagated-user-env-packages`.
+
+This release has contributions from Adrien Devresse, Aleksandr Pashkov,
+Alexandre Esteves, Amine Chikhaoui, Andrew Dunham, Asad Saeeduddin,
+aszlig, Ben Challenor, Ben Gamari, Benjamin Hipple, Bogdan Seniuc, Corey
+O'Connor, Daiderd Jordan, Daniel Peebles, Daniel Poelzleithner, Danylo
+Hlynskyi, Dmitry Kalinkin, Domen Kožar, Doug Beardsley, Eelco Dolstra,
+Erik Arvstedt, Félix Baylac-Jacqué, Gleb Peregud, Graham Christensen,
+Guillaume Maudoux, Ivan Kozik, John Arnold, Justin Humm, Linus
+Heckemann, Lorenzo Manacorda, Matthew Justin Bauer, Matthew O'Gorman,
+Maximilian Bosch, Michael Bishop, Michael Fiano, Michael Mercier,
+Michael Raskin, Michael Weiss, Nicolas Dudebout, Peter Simons, Ryan
+Trinkle, Samuel Dionne-Riel, Sean Seefried, Shea Levy, Symphorien Gibol,
+Tim Engler, Tim Sears, Tuomas Tynkkynen, volth, Will Dietz, Yorick van
+Pelt and zimbatm.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.2.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.2.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b67d65db7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.2.md
@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+# Release 2.2 (2019-01-11)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. It also has the following changes:
+
+  - In derivations that use structured attributes (i.e. that specify set
+    the `__structuredAttrs` attribute to `true` to cause all attributes
+    to be passed to the builder in JSON format), you can now specify
+    closure checks per output, e.g.:
+    
+        outputChecks."out" = {
+          # The closure of 'out' must not be larger than 256 MiB.
+          maxClosureSize = 256 * 1024 * 1024;
+        
+          # It must not refer to C compiler or to the 'dev' output.
+          disallowedRequisites = [ stdenv.cc "dev" ];
+        };
+        
+        outputChecks."dev" = {
+          # The 'dev' output must not be larger than 128 KiB.
+          maxSize = 128 * 1024;
+        };
+
+  - The derivation attribute `requiredSystemFeatures` is now enforced
+    for local builds, and not just to route builds to remote builders.
+    The supported features of a machine can be specified through the
+    configuration setting `system-features`.
+    
+    By default, `system-features` includes `kvm` if `/dev/kvm` exists.
+    For compatibility, it also includes the pseudo-features
+    `nixos-test`, `benchmark` and `big-parallel` which are used by
+    Nixpkgs to route builds to particular Hydra build machines.
+
+  - Sandbox builds are now enabled by default on Linux.
+
+  - The new command `nix doctor` shows potential issues with your Nix
+    installation.
+
+  - The `fetchGit` builtin function now uses a caching scheme that puts
+    different remote repositories in distinct local repositories, rather
+    than a single shared repository. This may require more disk space
+    but is faster.
+
+  - The `dirOf` builtin function now works on relative paths.
+
+  - Nix now supports [SRI hashes](https://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/), allowing
+    the hash algorithm and hash to be specified in a single string. For
+    example, you can write:
+    
+        import <nix/fetchurl.nix> {
+          url = https://nixos.org/releases/nix/nix-2.1.3/nix-2.1.3.tar.xz;
+          hash = "sha256-XSLa0FjVyADWWhFfkZ2iKTjFDda6mMXjoYMXLRSYQKQ=";
+        };
+    
+    instead of
+    
+        import <nix/fetchurl.nix> {
+          url = https://nixos.org/releases/nix/nix-2.1.3/nix-2.1.3.tar.xz;
+          sha256 = "5d22dad058d5c800d65a115f919da22938c50dd6ba98c5e3a183172d149840a4";
+        };
+    
+    In fixed-output derivations, the `outputHashAlgo` attribute is no
+    longer mandatory if `outputHash` specifies the hash.
+    
+    `nix hash-file` and `nix
+                    hash-path` now print hashes in SRI format by default. They also use
+    SHA-256 by default instead of SHA-512 because that's what we use
+    most of the time in Nixpkgs.
+
+  - Integers are now 64 bits on all platforms.
+
+  - The evaluator now prints profiling statistics (enabled via the
+    `NIX_SHOW_STATS` and `NIX_COUNT_CALLS` environment variables) in
+    JSON format.
+
+  - The option `--xml` in `nix-store
+                    --query` has been removed. Instead, there now is an option
+    `--graphml` to output the dependency graph in GraphML format.
+
+  - All `nix-*` commands are now symlinks to `nix`. This saves a bit of
+    disk space.
+
+  - `nix repl` now uses `libeditline` or `libreadline`.
diff --git a/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.3.md b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.3.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d1f4e3734
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/src/release-notes/rl-2.3.md
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+# Release 2.3 (2019-09-04)
+
+This is primarily a bug fix release. However, it makes some incompatible
+changes:
+
+  - Nix now uses BSD file locks instead of POSIX file locks. Because of
+    this, you should not use Nix 2.3 and previous releases at the same
+    time on a Nix store.
+
+It also has the following changes:
+
+  - `builtins.fetchGit`'s `ref` argument now allows specifying an
+    absolute remote ref. Nix will automatically prefix `ref` with
+    `refs/heads` only if `ref` doesn't already begin with `refs/`.
+
+  - The installer now enables sandboxing by default on Linux when the
+    system has the necessary kernel support.
+
+  - The `max-jobs` setting now defaults to 1.
+
+  - New builtin functions: `builtins.isPath`, `builtins.hashFile`.
+
+  - The `nix` command has a new `--print-build-logs` (`-L`) flag to
+    print build log output to stderr, rather than showing the last log
+    line in the progress bar. To distinguish between concurrent builds,
+    log lines are prefixed by the name of the package.
+
+  - Builds are now executed in a pseudo-terminal, and the `TERM`
+    environment variable is set to `xterm-256color`. This allows many
+    programs (e.g. `gcc`, `clang`, `cmake`) to print colorized log
+    output.
+
+  - Add `--no-net` convenience flag. This flag disables substituters;
+    sets the `tarball-ttl` setting to infinity (ensuring that any
+    previously downloaded files are considered current); and disables
+    retrying downloads and sets the connection timeout to the minimum.
+    This flag is enabled automatically if there are no configured
+    non-loopback network interfaces.
+
+  - Add a `post-build-hook` setting to run a program after a build has
+    succeeded.
+
+  - Add a `trace-function-calls` setting to log the duration of Nix
+    function calls to stderr.