snix/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1.9.xml

<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
      xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
      version="5.0"
      xml:id="ssec-relnotes-1.9">

<title>Release 1.9 (June 12, 2015)</title>

<para>In addition to the usual bug fixes, this release has the
following new features:</para>

<itemizedlist>

  <listitem>
    <para>Signed binary cache support. You can enable signature
    checking by adding the following to <filename>nix.conf</filename>:

<programlisting>
signed-binary-caches = *
binary-cache-public-keys = cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=
</programlisting>

    This will prevent Nix from downloading any binary from the cache
    that is not signed by one of the keys listed in
    <option>binary-cache-public-keys</option>.</para>

    <para>Signature checking is only supported if you built Nix with
    the <literal>libsodium</literal> package.</para>

    <para>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.</para>

  </listitem>

  <listitem>

    <para>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:</para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem><para>In <command>nix-env</command>:

<screen>
$ nix-env -f https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-14.12.tar.gz -iA firefox
</screen>

      This installs Firefox from the latest tested and built revision
      of the NixOS 14.12 channel.</para></listitem>

      <listitem><para>In <command>nix-build</command> and
      <command>nix-shell</command>:

<screen>
$ nix-build https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz -A hello
</screen>

      This builds GNU Hello from the latest revision of the Nixpkgs
      master branch.</para></listitem>

      <listitem><para>In the Nix search path (as specified via
      <envar>NIX_PATH</envar> or <option>-I</option>). For example, to
      start a shell containing the Pan package from a specific version
      of Nixpkgs:

<screen>
$ nix-shell -p pan -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/8a3eea054838b55aca962c3fbde9c83c102b8bf2.tar.gz
</screen>

      </para></listitem>

      <listitem><para>In <command>nixos-rebuild</command> (on NixOS):

<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild test -I nixpkgs=nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-unstable.tar.gz
</screen>

      </para></listitem>

      <listitem><para>In Nix expressions, via the new builtin function <function>fetchTarball</function>:

<programlisting>
with import (fetchTarball https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-14.12.tar.gz) {}; …
</programlisting>

      (This is not allowed in restricted mode.)</para></listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

  </listitem>

  <listitem>

    <para><command>nix-shell</command> improvements:</para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem><para><command>nix-shell</command> now has a flag
      <option>--run</option> to execute a command in the
      <command>nix-shell</command> environment,
      e.g. <literal>nix-shell --run make</literal>. This is like
      the existing <option>--command</option> flag, except that it
      uses a non-interactive shell (ensuring that hitting Ctrl-C won’t
      drop you into the child shell).</para></listitem>

      <listitem><para><command>nix-shell</command> can now be used as
      a <literal>#!</literal>-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:

<programlisting>
#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i runghc -p haskellPackages.ghc haskellPackages.HTTP

import Network.HTTP

main = do
  resp &lt;- Network.HTTP.simpleHTTP (getRequest "http://nixos.org/")
  body &lt;- getResponseBody resp
  print (take 100 body)
</programlisting>

      Of course, the dependencies are cached in the Nix store, so the
      second invocation of this script will be much
      faster.</para></listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

  </listitem>

  <listitem>

    <para>Chroot improvements:</para>

    <itemizedlist>

      <listitem><para>Chroot builds are now supported on Mac OS X
      (using its sandbox mechanism).</para></listitem>

      <listitem><para>If chroots are enabled, they are now used for
      all derivations, including fixed-output derivations (such as
      <function>fetchurl</function>). 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
      <option>build-use-chroot</option> to
      <literal>relaxed</literal>.</para></listitem>

      <listitem><para>On Linux, if chroots are enabled, builds are
      performed in a private PID namespace once again. (This
      functionality was lost in Nix 1.8.)</para></listitem>

      <listitem><para>Store paths listed in
      <option>build-chroot-dirs</option> are now automatically
      expanded to their closure. For instance, if you want
      <filename>/nix/store/…-bash/bin/sh</filename> mounted in your
      chroot as <filename>/bin/sh</filename>, you only need to say
      <literal>build-chroot-dirs =
      /bin/sh=/nix/store/…-bash/bin/sh</literal>; it is no longer
      necessary to specify the dependencies of Bash.</para></listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

  </listitem>

  <listitem><para>The new derivation attribute
  <varname>passAsFile</varname> 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 <function>writeTextFile</function> uses
  this.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>You can now use <literal>~</literal> in Nix file
  names to refer to your home directory, e.g. <literal>import
  ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix</literal>.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Nix has a new option <option>restrict-eval</option>
  that allows limiting what paths the Nix evaluator has access to. By
  passing <literal>--option restrict-eval true</literal> 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).</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para><command>nix-env</command> now only creates a new
  “generation” symlink in <filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles</filename>
  if something actually changed.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>The environment variable <envar>NIX_PAGER</envar>
  can now be set to override <envar>PAGER</envar>. You can set it to
  <literal>cat</literal> to disable paging for Nix commands
  only.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Failing <literal>&lt;...></literal>
  lookups now show position information.</para></listitem>

  <listitem><para>Improved Boehm GC use: we disabled scanning for
  interior pointers, which should reduce the “<literal>Repeated
  allocation of very large block</literal>” warnings and associated
  retention of memory.</para></listitem>

</itemizedlist>

<para>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.</para>

</section>