1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
|
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<title>Nixpkgs Release Notes</title>
<section><title>Release 0.10 (October 11, 2006)</title>
<note><para>This release of Nixpkgs requires <link
xlink:href='http://nix.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/nix-0.10/'>Nix
0.10</link> or higher.</para></note>
<para>This release has the following improvements:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><filename>pkgs/system/all-packages-generic.nix</filename>
is gone, we now just have
<filename>pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix</filename> that contains
all available packages. This should cause much less confusion with
users. <filename>all-packages.nix</filename> is a function that by
default returns packages for the current platform, but you can
override this by specifying a different <varname>system</varname>
argument.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Certain packages in Nixpkgs are now
user-configurable through a configuration file, i.e., without having
to edit the Nix expressions in Nixpkgs. For instance, the Firefox
provided in the Nixpkgs channel is built without the RealPlayer
plugin (for legal reasons). Previously, you could easily enable
RealPlayer support by editing the call to the Firefox function in
<filename>all-packages.nix</filename>, but such changes are not
respected when Firefox is subsequently updated through the Nixpkgs
channel.</para>
<para>The Nixpkgs configuration file (found in
<filename>~/.nixpkgs/config.nix</filename> or through the
<envar>NIXPKGS_CONFIG</envar> environment variable) is an attribute
set that contains configuration options that
<filename>all-packages.nix</filename> reads and uses for certain
packages. For instance, the following configuration file:
<programlisting>
{
firefox = {
enableRealPlayer = true;
};
}</programlisting>
persistently enables RealPlayer support in the Firefox
build.</para>
<para>(Actually, <literal>firefox.enableRealPlayer</literal> is the
<emphasis>only</emphasis> configuration option currently available,
but more are sure to be added.)</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Support for new platforms:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><literal>i686-cygwin</literal>, i.e., Windows
(using <link xlink:href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</link>).
The standard environment on <literal>i686-cygwin</literal> by
default builds binaries for the Cygwin environment (i.e., it
uses Cygwin tools and produces executables that use the Cygwin
library). However, there is also a standard environment that
produces binaries that use <link
xlink:href="http://www.mingw.org/">MinGW</link>. You can use it
by calling <filename>all-package.nix</filename> with the
<varname>stdenvType</varname> argument set to
<literal>"i686-mingw"</literal>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><literal>i686-darwin</literal>, i.e., Mac OS X
on Intel CPUs.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><literal>powerpc-linux</literal>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><literal>x86_64-linux</literal>, i.e., Linux on
64-bit AMD/Intel CPUs. Unlike <literal>i686-linux</literal>,
this platform doesn’t have a pure <literal>stdenv</literal>
yet.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>The default compiler is now GCC 4.1.1.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>X11 updated to X.org’s X11R7.1.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Notable new packages:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Opera.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition and the Windows
SDK.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
In total there are now around 809 packages in Nixpkgs.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem><para>It is now <emphasis>much</emphasis> easier to
override the default C compiler and other tools in
<literal>stdenv</literal> for specific packages.
<filename>all-packages.nix</filename> provides two utility
functions for this purpose: <function>overrideGCC</function> and
<function>overrideInStdenv</function>. Both take a
<literal>stdenv</literal> and return an augmented
<literal>stdenv</literal>; the formed changes the C compiler, and
the latter adds additional packages to the front of
<literal>stdenv</literal>’s initial <envar>PATH</envar>, allowing
tools to be overriden.</para>
<para>For instance, the package <varname>strategoxt</varname>
doesn’t build with the GNU Make in <literal>stdenv</literal>
(version 3.81), so we call it with an augmented
<literal>stdenv</literal> that uses GNU Make 3.80:
<programlisting>
strategoxt = (import ../development/compilers/strategoxt) {
inherit fetchurl pkgconfig sdf aterm;
stdenv = overrideInStdenv stdenv [gnumake380];
};</programlisting>
Likewise, there are many packages that don’t compile with the
default GCC (4.1.1), but that’s easily fixed:
<programlisting>
exult = import ../games/exult {
inherit fetchurl SDL SDL_mixer zlib libpng unzip;
stdenv = overrideGCC stdenv gcc34;
};</programlisting>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>It has also become much easier to experiment with
changes to the <literal>stdenv</literal> setup script (which notably
contains the generic builder). Since edits to
<filename>pkgs/stdenv/generic/setup.sh</filename> trigger a rebuild
of <emphasis>everything</emphasis>, this was formerly quite painful.
But now <literal>stdenv</literal> contains a function to
“regenerate” <literal>stdenv</literal> with a different setup
script, allowing the use of a different setup script for specific
packages:
<programlisting>
pkg = import <replaceable>...</replaceable> {
stdenv = stdenv.regenerate ./my-setup.sh;
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
}</programlisting>
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>The following people contributed to this release:
Andres Löh,
Armijn Hemel,
Christof Douma,
Eelco Dolstra,
Eelco Visser,
Mart Kolthof,
Martin Bravenboer,
Merijn de Jonge,
Rob Vermaas and
Roy van den Broek.
</para>
</section>
<section><title>Release 0.9 (January 31, 2006)</title>
<para>There have been zillions of changes since the last release of
Nixpkgs. Many packages have been added or updated. The following are
some of the more notable changes:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Distribution files have been moved to <link
xlink:href="http://nix.cs.uu.nl/" />.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The C library on Linux, Glibc, has been updated to
version 2.3.6.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The default compiler is now GCC 3.4.5. GCC 4.0.2 is
also available.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The old, unofficial Xlibs has been replaced by the
official modularised X11 distribution from X.org, i.e., X11R7.0.
X11R7.0 consists of 287 (!) packages, all of which are in Nixpkgs
though not all have been tested. It is now possible to build a
working X server (previously we only had X client libraries). We
use a fully Nixified X server on NixOS.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The Sun JDK 5 has been purified, i.e., it doesn’t
require any non-Nix components such as
<filename>/lib/ld-linux.so.2</filename>. This means that Java
applications such as Eclipse and Azureus can run on
NixOS.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Hardware-accelerated OpenGL support, used by games
like Quake 3 (which is now built from source).</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Improved support for FreeBSD on
x86.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Improved Haskell support; e.g., the GHC build is now
pure.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Some support for cross-compilation: cross-compiling
builds of GCC and Binutils, and cross-compiled builds of the C
library uClibc.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Notable new packages:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>teTeX, including support for building LaTeX
documents using Nix (with automatic dependency
determination).</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Ruby.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>System-level packages to support NixOS,
e.g. Grub, GNU <literal>parted</literal> and so
on.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><literal>ecj</literal>, the Eclipse Compiler for
Java, so we finally have a freely distributable compiler that
supports Java 5.0.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><literal>php</literal>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>The GIMP.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Inkscape.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>GAIM.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><literal>kdelibs</literal>. This allows us to
add KDE-based packages (such as
<literal>kcachegrind</literal>).</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>The following people contributed to this release:
Andres Löh,
Armijn Hemel,
Bogdan Dumitriu,
Christof Douma,
Eelco Dolstra,
Eelco Visser,
Mart Kolthof,
Martin Bravenboer,
Rob Vermaas and
Roy van den Broek.
</para>
</section>
<section><title>Release 0.8 (April 11, 2005)</title>
<para>This release is mostly to remain synchronised with the changed
hashing scheme in Nix 0.8.</para>
<para>Notable updates:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Adobe Reader 7.0</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Various security updates (zlib 1.2.2, etc.)</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</section>
<section><title>Release 0.7 (March 14, 2005)</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>The bootstrap process for the standard build
environment on Linux (stdenv-linux) has been improved. It is no
longer dependent in its initial bootstrap stages on the system
Glibc, GCC, and other tools. Rather, Nixpkgs contains a statically
linked bash and curl, and uses that to download other statically
linked tools. These are then used to build a Glibc and dynamically
linked versions of all other tools.</para>
<para>This change also makes the bootstrap process faster. For
instance, GCC is built only once instead of three times.</para>
<para>(Contributed by Armijn Hemel.)</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Tarballs used by Nixpkgs are now obtained from the same server
that hosts Nixpkgs (<link
xlink:href="http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/" />). This reduces the
risk of packages being unbuildable due to moved or deleted files on
various servers.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>There now is a generic mechanism for building Perl modules.
See the various Perl modules defined in
pkgs/system/all-packages-generic.nix.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Notable new packages:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Qt 3</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>MySQL</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>MythTV</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Mono</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>MonoDevelop (alpha)</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Xine</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Notable updates:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>GCC 3.4.3</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Glibc 2.3.4</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>GTK 2.6</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>
</article>
|