[jackhill/guix/guix.git] / NEWS

                                                              -*- org -*-
#+TITLE: Guix NEWS – history of user-visible changes
#+STARTUP: content hidestars

Copyright © 2013 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>

  Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
  notice and this notice are preserved.

Please send Guix bug reports to bug-guix@gnu.org.


* Changes in 0.2 (since 0.1)

** Package management

*** Guix commands are now sub-commands of the “guix” program

Instead of typing “guix-package”, one now has to type “guix package”, and so
on.  This has allowed us to homogenize the user interface and initial program
setup, and to allow commands to be upgradable through “guix pull”.

*** New “guix package --upgrade” option

As the name implies, this option atomically upgrades all the packages
installed in a profile or the set of packages matching a given regexp.
See “Invoking guix package” in the manual.

*** New “guix package --search” option

Performs a full text search in package synopses and descriptions, and returns
the matching packages in recutils format.  See “Invoking guix package” in the
manual, for details.

*** New “guix pull” command

The command pulls the latest version of Guix–both the package management
modules and the distribution.  See the manual for details.

*** New binary substituter

The “substituter” mechanism allows pre-built binaries to be transparently
downloaded instead of performing a build locally.  Currently binaries are
available for x86_64 Linux-based GNU systems from http://hydra.gnu.org.  The
distribution is continuously built and binaries are made available from there.

See http://hydra.gnu.org/jobset/gnu/master under “Job status” for the list of
available binary packages.

*** New “guix refresh” command

The command is used by Guix maintainers.  It automatically updates the
distribution to the latest upstream releases of GNU software.

*** New “guix hash” command

Convenience command to compute the hash of a file.  See the manual for
details.

*** Nix daemon code updated

The daemon code from Nix, used by the ‘guix-daemon’ command, has been updated
to current Nix ‘master’.

** Programming interfaces

*** (guix download) now supports HTTPS, using GnuTLS

It allows package source tarballs to be retrieved over HTTPS.

*** New ‘native-search-path’ and ‘search-path’ package fields

Packages can define in their ‘native-search-path’ field environment variables
that define search paths and need to be set for proper functioning of the
package.  For instance, GCC has ‘CPATH’ and ‘LIBRARY_PATH’ in its
‘native-search-path’, Perl has ‘PERL5LIB’, Python has ‘PYTHONPATH’, etc.
These environment variables are automatically set when building a package that
uses one of these.

*** Package inputs can be a function of the target system type

The ‘inputs’ field of a package can now be conditional on the value of
(%current-system).  This is useful for packages that take system-dependent
tarballs as inputs, such as GNU/MIT Scheme.

*** New build systems

The ‘perl-build-system’, ‘python-build-system’, and ‘cmake-build-system’ have
been added.  They implement the standard build systems for Perl, Python, and
CMake packages.

*** Tools to build Linux initrds, QEMU images, and more

The (gnu packages linux-initrd) module provides a procedure to build a Linux
initrd (“initial RAM disk”).  The initrd embeds Guile, which is used to
evaluate the given expression.  The example below returns an initrd that
mounts the /proc file system and starts a REPL:

  (expression->initrd
    '(begin
       (mkdir "/proc")
       (mount "none" "/proc" "proc")
       ((@ (system repl repl) start-repl))))

More examples in the linux-initrd.scm file.

Experimental interfaces to produce and use QEMU images are provided by the
(gnu system vm) module.  For instance, the
‘expression->derivation-in-linux-vm’ evaluates the given Scheme expression in
a QEMU virtual machine running the Linux kernel and Guile.

** GNU distribution

Many updates and additions have been made to the distribution.  Here are the
highlights.

*** Major updates

GCC 4.7.3 (the default) and GCC 4.8.0, Binutils 2.23.2, Guile 2.0.9,
Coreutils 8.20, GDB 7.6, Texinfo 5.1.

*** Noteworthy new packages

TeXLive, Xorg, GNU GRUB, GNU Parted, QEMU and QEMU-KVM, Avahi, Bigloo,
CHICKEN, Scheme48, Hugs, Python, Lua, Samba.
Commit	Line	Data
06504acb LC	1	-- org --
	2	#+TITLE: Guix NEWS – history of user-visible changes
	3	#+STARTUP: content hidestars
4056b828 LC	4
	5	Copyright © 2013 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
	6
	7	Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
	8	are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
	9	notice and this notice are preserved.
	10
	11	Please send Guix bug reports to bug-guix@gnu.org.
	12
85f3a05e LC	13
	14	* Changes in 0.2 (since 0.1)
	15
4056b828 LC	16	** Package management
	17
	18	*** Guix commands are now sub-commands of the “guix” program
	19
	20	Instead of typing “guix-package”, one now has to type “guix package”, and so
	21	on. This has allowed us to homogenize the user interface and initial program
	22	setup, and to allow commands to be upgradable through “guix pull”.
	23
06504acb LC	24	*** New “guix package --upgrade” option
	25
	26	As the name implies, this option atomically upgrades all the packages
e3729544 LC	27	installed in a profile or the set of packages matching a given regexp.
e3729544 LC	28	See “Invoking guix package” in the manual.
06504acb	29
0f241da2 LC	30	*** New “guix package --search” option
	31
	32	Performs a full text search in package synopses and descriptions, and returns
	33	the matching packages in recutils format. See “Invoking guix package” in the
	34	manual, for details.
	35
4056b828 LC	36	*** New “guix pull” command
	37
	38	The command pulls the latest version of Guix–both the package management
	39	modules and the distribution. See the manual for details.
	40
	41	*** New binary substituter
	42
	43	The “substituter” mechanism allows pre-built binaries to be transparently
	44	downloaded instead of performing a build locally. Currently binaries are
0f241da2 LC	45	available for x86_64 Linux-based GNU systems from http://hydra.gnu.org. The
	46	distribution is continuously built and binaries are made available from there.
	47
	48	See http://hydra.gnu.org/jobset/gnu/master under “Job status” for the list of
	49	available binary packages.
4056b828 LC	50
	51	*** New “guix refresh” command
	52
	53	The command is used by Guix maintainers. It automatically updates the
	54	distribution to the latest upstream releases of GNU software.
	55
	56	*** New “guix hash” command
	57
	58	Convenience command to compute the hash of a file. See the manual for
	59	details.
	60
0f241da2	61	*** Nix daemon code updated
4056b828	62
0f241da2 LC	63	The daemon code from Nix, used by the ‘guix-daemon’ command, has been updated
0f241da2 LC	64	to current Nix ‘master’.
4056b828 LC	65
	66	** Programming interfaces
	67
0f241da2 LC	68	*** (guix download) now supports HTTPS, using GnuTLS
	69
	70	It allows package source tarballs to be retrieved over HTTPS.
	71
4056b828 LC	72	*** New ‘native-search-path’ and ‘search-path’ package fields
	73
	74	Packages can define in their ‘native-search-path’ field environment variables
	75	that define search paths and need to be set for proper functioning of the
	76	package. For instance, GCC has ‘CPATH’ and ‘LIBRARY_PATH’ in its
	77	‘native-search-path’, Perl has ‘PERL5LIB’, Python has ‘PYTHONPATH’, etc.
	78	These environment variables are automatically set when building a package that
	79	uses one of these.
	80
	81	*** Package inputs can be a function of the target system type
	82
	83	The ‘inputs’ field of a package can now be conditional on the value of
	84	(%current-system). This is useful for packages that take system-dependent
	85	tarballs as inputs, such as GNU/MIT Scheme.
	86
	87	*** New build systems
	88
	89	The ‘perl-build-system’, ‘python-build-system’, and ‘cmake-build-system’ have
	90	been added. They implement the standard build systems for Perl, Python, and
	91	CMake packages.
	92
47d18810 LC	93	*** Tools to build Linux initrds, QEMU images, and more
	94
	95	The (gnu packages linux-initrd) module provides a procedure to build a Linux
	96	initrd (“initial RAM disk”). The initrd embeds Guile, which is used to
	97	evaluate the given expression. The example below returns an initrd that
	98	mounts the /proc file system and starts a REPL:
	99
	100	(expression->initrd
	101	'(begin
	102	(mkdir "/proc")
	103	(mount "none" "/proc" "proc")
	104	((@ (system repl repl) start-repl))))
	105
	106	More examples in the linux-initrd.scm file.
	107
	108	Experimental interfaces to produce and use QEMU images are provided by the
	109	(gnu system vm) module. For instance, the
	110	‘expression->derivation-in-linux-vm’ evaluates the given Scheme expression in
	111	a QEMU virtual machine running the Linux kernel and Guile.
	112
4056b828 LC	113	** GNU distribution
	114
	115	Many updates and additions have been made to the distribution. Here are the
	116	highlights.
	117
	118	*** Major updates
	119
	120	GCC 4.7.3 (the default) and GCC 4.8.0, Binutils 2.23.2, Guile 2.0.9,
	121	Coreutils 8.20, GDB 7.6, Texinfo 5.1.
	122
	123	*** Noteworthy new packages
	124
0f241da2 LC	125	TeXLive, Xorg, GNU GRUB, GNU Parted, QEMU and QEMU-KVM, Avahi, Bigloo,
0f241da2 LC	126	CHICKEN, Scheme48, Hugs, Python, Lua, Samba.