NEWS

   1                                                               -*- org -*-
   2 #+TITLE: Guix NEWS – history of user-visible changes
   3 #+STARTUP: content hidestars
   4
   5 Copyright © 2013, 2014 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
  13 * Changes in 0.7 (since 0.6)
  14 ** Package management
  15 *** ‘guix package’ has a new ‘--show’ option
  16 *** ‘guix refresh’ has a new ‘--list-dependent’ option
  17
  18 ** Programming interfaces
  19 *** New (guix gexp) module, which implements “G-expressions”
  20
  21 G-expressions are a new mechanism to embed build-side code in host-side
  22 code.  See “G-Expressions” in the manual.
  23
  24 *** (gnu system) and related modules now use G-expressions
  25
  26 This greatly simplifies code, and guarantees that build code carries
  27 references to the packages or derivations it uses.
  28
  29 *** ‘build-expression->derivation’ is deprecated in favor of G-expressions
  30 *** The (gnu system) module has been largely augmented and factorized
  31 *** New (guix build vm) module, support for virtual machine images
  32 *** New (guix build activation) module, for “system activation”
  33 *** New (guix build syscalls) module
  34 *** New (guix build install) and module for whole system installation
  35 *** New (gnu system install) module, for the installation system
  36 *** New (gnu system file-systems) module, for ‘file-system’ declarations
  37 *** New (gnu) module, which aggregates common (gnu …) modules
  38 *** ‘service’ records now have an optional ‘activate’ field
  39
  40 This allows services to specify code to run at system activation time.
  41
  42 ** GNU distribution
  43 *** An image to install the GNU system from a USB stick is provided
  44
  45 This is the first time an installation image is provided.  See “System
  46 Installation” in the manual for details.  This is work in progress as noted
  47 in “Limitations”.  Your feedback and help are welcome!
  48
  49 *** Support for more parameters in ‘operating-system’ declarations
  50
  51 Operating system declarations can now provide a list of file systems, a list
  52 of setuid programs, bootloader options, and more.  See “System Configuration”
  53 in the manual.
  54
  55 *** ‘guix system’ supports more actions
  56
  57 Newly supported actions are ‘init’, ‘build’, ‘reconfigure’, and ‘disk-image’.
  58 See “Invoking guix system” in the manual.
  59
  60 *** User accounts and groups are created at system activation time
  61 *** Virtual machine support uses para-virtualized devices
  62 *** GCC package now has an additional ‘lib’ output, for run-time support libs
  63 *** GLib package now has a separate “bin” output (<http://bugs.gnu.org/17853>)
  64 *** 134 new packages
  65
  66 abbaye, aegis, attica, babl, barcode, behave, btar, busybox, ccache, ccrtp,
  67 chess, clucene, cmatrix, commoncpp, conkeror, cook, cssc, datamash, diffstat,
  68 doxygen, dropbear, dtach, duplicity, e2fsck-static, exosip, fftw-openmpi,
  69 fish, gconf, gegl, gimp, gmsh, gnome-mime-data, gnome-vfs, gnumeric, goffice,
  70 gsegrafix, guile-opengl, guile-static-stripped, hdup, hwloc, inotify-tools,
  71 jrnl, kbd, kmod, lftp, libarchive, libart-lgpl, libbonobo, libbonoboui,
  72 libcroco, libdbusmenu-qt, libftdi, libglade, libgnome, libgnomecanvas,
  73 libgnomeprint, libgnomeprintui, libgnomeui, libgsf, libidl, libmcrypt,
  74 libmhash, librsvg, librsync, libsodium, libuv, libvpx, links, lzop, man-pages,
  75 maxima, mcrypt, mosh, mpg123, mplayer, mu, ncmpcpp, node, notmuch, numactl,
  76 offlineimap, openmpi, orbit2, osip, pangox-compat, perl-io-tty, petsc,
  77 petsc-complex, petsc-complex-openmpi, petsc-openmpi, pingus, podofo, protobuf,
  78 pt-scotch, python-enum34, python-keyring, python-lockfile, python-mock,
  79 python-parse, python-parse-type, python-parsedatetime, python-pycrypto,
  80 python-six, python-tzlocal, python2-lockfile, python2-mock, qjson, qrencode,
  81 rasqal, rdiff-backup, rdup, redland, rottlog, scotch, sipwitch, sshfs-fuse,
  82 strigi, sudo, superlu, superlu-dist, talkfilters, talloc, tcpdump, tinyproxy,
  83 transmission, ucommon, udev, vlc, vtk, wakelan, wireless-tools,
  84 wpa-supplicant, xboard, youtube-dl
  85
  86 *** 87 package updates
  87
  88 bitlbee-3.2.2, cursynth-1.5, ddrescue-1.18.1, dfc-3.0.4, dmd-0.2,
  89 docbook-xml-4.3, docbook-xml-4.4, docbook-xsl-1.78.1, dvdisaster-0.72.6,
  90 ffmpeg-2.3, fftw-3.3.4, fftwf-3.3.4, flac-1.3.0, gawk-4.1.1, gcc-4.7.4,
  91 gcc-4.8.3, gcc-4.8.3, gcc-4.9.1, gcc-cross-mips64el-linux-gnuabi64-4.8.3,
  92 gcc-objc++-4.8.3, gcc-objc-4.8.3, gcc-stripped-tarball-4.8.3,
  93 gcc-toolchain-4.8.3, gcc-toolchain-4.9.1, gccgo-4.8.3, gdb-7.7.1,
  94 gettext-0.19.2, gfortran-4.8.3, glib-2.40.0, global-6.3, gmp-6.0.0a,
  95 gnupg-1.4.18, gnupg-2.0.25, gnutls-3.2.15, gp2c-0.0.9pl1, grep-2.20,
  96 gst-plugins-base-1.0.10, gstreamer-0.10.36, gtk+-3.10.1, gtkmm-2.24.2,
  97 guile-2.0.11, guile-2.0.11, guix-0.6, guix-0.6.0ae8c15, htop-1.0.3,
  98 icu4c-53.1, imagemagick-6.8.9-0, json-c-0.12, libdrm-2.4.33, libgc-7.2e,
  99 libgcrypt-1.5.3, libgpg-error-1.13, libjpeg-8d, libmicrohttpd-0.9.37,
 100 libogg-1.3.2, libotr-4.0.0, libtasn1-3.6, libvorbis-1.3.4, lightning-2.0.4,
 101 linux-libre-3.15.6, lua-5.1.5, lua-5.2.3, mcron-1.0.8, moe-1.6, nano-2.3.6,
 102 neon-0.29.6, nettle-3.0, openssl-1.0.1h, parallel-20140722, pari-gp-2.7.1,
 103 pspp-0.8.3, python-2.7.6, python-dateutil-2.2, python2-dateutil-2.2,
 104 qemu-2.0.0, qemu-headless-2.0.0, qt-4.8.6, qt-5.2.1, readline-6.2,
 105 screen-4.2.1, soprano-2.9.4, texinfo-5.2, texlive-2014, tor-0.2.4.22,
 106 wdiff-1.2.2, xorriso-1.3.8, xterm-304
 107
 108 ** Native language support
 109 *** New translations: de (German), and hu (Hungarian)
 110 *** Updated translations: eo, pt_BR, sr, vi
 111 *** Package descriptions moved from the ‘guix’ text domain to ‘guix-packages’
 112 ** Bugs fixed
 113 *** Downloads are now faster (<http://bugs.gnu.org/15368>)
 114 *** ‘guix authenticate’ properly writes signatures to stdout
 115     (<http://bugs.gnu.org/17312>)
 116 *** Progress report of downloads is now properly displayed
 117 *** Error reporting of pk-crypto errors has been improved
 118 *** The 'patches' field now works for origins with no extension
 119 *** Synchronization and GC issues fixed in the offload hook
 120 *** (guix ftp-client) emits USER commands suitable for all servers
 121
 122 * Changes in 0.6 (since 0.5)
 123 ** Package management
 124 *** Default store directory changed to /gnu/store
 125
 126 Although it is still possible to configure Guix to use the old store
 127 directory, we recommend that you start with a fresh install to /gnu/store.
 128
 129 *** Substitutes from hydra.gnu.org must now be signed and authorized
 130 *** Support for offloading builds to other Guix machines over SSH
 131 *** New ‘guix archive’ command
 132 *** New ‘guix system’ command; it can currently build VM images
 133 *** ‘guix package’ accepts several arguments after -i, -r, and -u
 134 *** Updating a profile with ‘guix package’ is now noticeably faster
 135 *** ‘guix build’ can override a package’s source with the new ‘--with-source’
 136 *** ‘guix build’ has a new ‘--no-build-hook’ option
 137 *** ‘guix’ commands that build packages have a common set of options
 138 *** ‘guix hash’ has a new ‘--recursive’ option
 139 *** Daemon no longer bind-mounts the host’s /dev (improves reproducibility)
 140 ** Programming interfaces
 141 *** New (guix pk-crypto) and (guix pki) modules for public key cryptography
 142 *** New #:local-build? parameter for derivations that shouldn’t be offloaded
 143 *** (gnu system vm) has procedures to build VMs that share the host’s store
 144 *** New ‘text-file*’ procedure in (guix monads)
 145 *** System service definitions are now provided by the (guix services) modules
 146 *** New X and SLiM services in (gnu services xorg)
 147 *** New (guix git-download) and (guix svn-download) for git/svn checkouts
 148 ** GNU distribution
 149 *** 91 new packages
 150
 151 a2ps, asciidoc, aspell-dict-en, aspell-dict-eo, aspell-dict-es,
 152 aspell-dict-fr, aumix, bitlbee, bogofilter, boost, calcurse, clusterssh,
 153 corkscrew, cursynth, docbook-xml, docbook-xsl, elfutils, enscript, fftwf,
 154 fltk, fuse, gcc-toolchain, giflib, glade, gmime, gnome-desktop, gnubg, gnubik,
 155 gnumach-headers, gnunet, gnuplot, gnurl, gphoto2, gtkglext, guile-json,
 156 guile-reader-for-guile_2.0.11, gxmessage, hdf5, hurd-headers, inkscape, iotop,
 157 isc-dhcp, iso-codes, jnettop, libatomic-ops, libexif, libgphoto2, libmpcdec,
 158 libmpdclient, libotr, libpcap, libpeas, libpipeline, libtirpc, libwebsockets,
 159 ltrace, luajit, lynx, man-db, mc, mig, miniupnpc, moe, mpc123, mpd, ncdc,
 160 ncdu, ncmpc, neon, neon, octave, opus, paperkey, patchutils, perl-tk,
 161 perl-x11-protocol, pinentry, python2-element-tree, python2-pybugz, quilt,
 162 source-highlight, stalonetray, trueprint, ttf-dejavu, unionfs-fuse,
 163 unionfs-fuse-static, uucp, vera, windowmaker, xapian, xterm
 164
 165 *** 90 package updates
 166
 167 apl-1.3, autoconf-2.68, automake-1.14.1, bash-4.3, bash-light-4.3,
 168 bigloo-4.1a, binutils-2.24, binutils-static-stripped-tarball-2.24,
 169 coreutils-8.22, curl-7.35.0, ed-1.10, ffmpeg-2.1.4, file-5.18, freeipmi-1.4.1,
 170 gcc-4.8.2, gcc-4.8.2, gdb-7.7, gdbm-1.11, gettext-0.18.3.2, glib-2.39.1,
 171 glibc-2.19, glibc-stripped-tarball-2.19, global-6.2.12, glpk-4.54,
 172 gnu-pw-mgr-1.2, gnupg-1.4.16, gnutls-3.2.12, gp2c-0.0.8pl1, grep-2.18,
 173 gst-plugins-base-0.10.36, gstreamer-1.0.10, gtk+-3.10.1, gtkmm-2.24.2,
 174 guile-2.0.11, guile-ssh-0.6.0, guile-static-stripped-tarball-2.0.11,
 175 guile-wm-1.0, guile-xcb-1.3, guix-0.5, help2man-1.45.1, icu4c-52.1,
 176 imagemagick-6.8.8-10, inetutils-1.9.2, lapack-3.5.0, libcdio-0.92,
 177 libdrm-2.4.46, libextractor-1.3, libgc-7.2e, libgc-7.4.0, libgcrypt-1.6.1,
 178 libjpeg-9, libmicrohttpd-0.9.34, libssh-0.6.3, libtasn1-3.4, lightning-2.0.3,
 179 linux-libre-3.13.7, mpc-1.0.2, mutt-1.5.23, net-base-5.2, ocrad-0.23,
 180 openssh-6.6p1, openssl-1.0.1g, parallel-20140322, pari-gp-2.7.0, pspp-0.8.2,
 181 pulseaudio-5.0, python-2.7.6, python-3.3.5, python-wrapper-3.3.5,
 182 python2-pysqlite-2.6.3a, qemu-1.7.1, qemu-headless-1.7.1,
 183 qemu-with-multiple-smb-shares-1.7.1, qt-4.8.5, qt-5.2.0, readline-6.3,
 184 recutils-1.7, slim-1.3.6, sqlite-3.8.4.3, subversion-1.7.14, texinfo-4.13a,
 185 tor-0.2.4.21, tzdata-2014a, units-2.11, valgrind-3.9.0, vim-7.4, wget-1.15,
 186 xnee-3.18, xorriso-1.3.6.pl01, zile-2.4.11
 187
 188 *** New ‘gcc-toolchain’ meta-package, makes it easy to install a GCC tool chain
 189 *** libc’s Info manual is now installed
 190 *** Binutils is built with --enable-deterministic-archives
 191 *** Packages that populated man/man* now populate share/man/man*
 192 *** Many other packaging improvements
 193 ** Bugs fixed
 194 *** ‘guix pull’ consumes less memory, compiles in parallel
 195 *** ‘guix package --list-*’ gracefully handles EPIPE when used in a pipeline
 196 *** ‘guix package’ handles collisions between a symlink and a directory
 197     (http://bugs.gnu.org/17083)
 198 *** HTTP downloads provide a ‘User-Agent’ field (http://bugs.gnu.org/16703)
 199 *** ‘guix package’ no longer shows misleading installed package number
 200     (http://bugs.gnu.org/16484)
 201 *** Manual suggests ‘useradd --system’ (http://bugs.gnu.org/16289)
 202 *** Python is built with ctypes support (http://bugs.gnu.org/16569)
 203 *** HTTP/TLS connection not terminated properly (http://bugs.gnu.org/14884)
 204 *** Gracefully handle poorly behaved HTTP servers (http://bugs.gnu.org/15733)
 205
 206 * Changes in 0.5 (since 0.4)
 207 ** Package management
 208 *** GNU package descriptions synchronized with the ‘gnumaint’ repository
 209
 210 In addition to synopses, descriptions of GNU packages are now kept in sync
 211 with the ‘gnumaint’ repository, which is the canonical place for GNU package
 212 meta-data.
 213
 214 ** Programming interfaces
 215 *** Patches are now listed as part of ‘origin’
 216
 217 The ‘origin’ form supports two new fields: ‘patches’ (list of patches), and
 218 ‘snippet’ (code snippet to modify the source.)  These are applied when running
 219 ‘guix build --source’.  See “Defining Packages” in the manual.
 220
 221 *** New (guix monads) monadic interface to operate on the store
 222
 223 See “The Store Monad” in the manual.  The (gnu system …) modules have been
 224 rewritten to use this monadic interface.
 225
 226 *** New (guix profiles) module
 227
 228 It provides an API for dealing with profiles, as with the ‘guix package’
 229 command.
 230
 231 *** New (gnu system) module
 232
 233 This module provides a generic way to describe the system’s configuration,
 234 and to instantiate it, regardless of the final medium (QEMU image, etc.)
 235 See “System Configuration” in the manual.
 236
 237 This is work in progress.  Send feedback to guix-devel@gnu.org!
 238
 239 *** ‘build-expression->derivation’ uses more parameters
 240
 241 Some positional parameters have been changed to keyword parameters.
 242 See “Derivations” in the manual.
 243
 244 ** GNU distribution
 245 *** New port to the Loongson MIPS64 processors, n32 ABI (‘mips64el-linux’)
 246
 247 Bootstrap binaries have been built for that architecture, and several
 248 Loongson-specific patches not yet available upstream have been applied to core
 249 packages.  See “GNU Distribution” and “Porting” in the manual.
 250
 251 Pre-built binaries are not yet available via hydra.gnu.org, so Guix will
 252 build from source on this platform.
 253
 254 *** 110 new packages
 255
 256 acct, alive, alsa-utils, apl, at-spi2-atk, at-spi2-core, atkmm, autogen,
 257 automoc4, brasero, bridge-utils, cairomm, catkin, complexity, evince, ffmpeg,
 258 fftw, ftgl, gcc-objc, gcc-objc++, gccgo, gcl, gfortran, glibmm, glpk,
 259 gnome-icon-theme, gnu-pw-mgr, gp2c, gpgme, gsettings-desktop-schemas, gtkmm,
 260 gtksourceview, guile-ssh, guile-wm, gvpe, hicolor-icon-theme, httpd, icecat,
 261 icon-naming-utils, json-c, lapack, libcanberra, libcap, libgnome-keyring,
 262 libmikmod, libnl, libnotify, libsamplerate, libsigc++, libsndfile, libssh,
 263 libtheora, libxkbcommon, mercurial, mtools, netcat, pangomm, parallel,
 264 pavucontrol, pciutils, pem, perl-encode-locale, perl-file-list,
 265 perl-file-listing, perl-html-parser, perl-html-tagset, perl-http-cookies,
 266 perl-http-daemon, perl-http-date, perl-http-message, perl-http-negotiate,
 267 perl-io-html, perl-libwww, perl-libxml, perl-lwp-mediatypes, perl-net-http,
 268 perl-uri, perl-www-robotrules, perl-xml-dom, perl-xml-regexp, perl-xml-simple,
 269 phonon, powertop, pulseaudio, python2-dogtail, python2-empy, qemu-headless,
 270 qt, qt, raptor2, scons, sdl, sdl-gfx, sdl-image, sdl-mixer, sdl-net, sdl-ttf,
 271 sdl2, serveez, shared-mime-info, sharutils, skribilo, slim, soprano, swig,
 272 xcb-util, xcb-util-image, xcb-util-keysyms, xcb-util-renderutil, xcb-util-wm
 273
 274 *** 47 package updates
 275
 276 atk 2.10.0, bison 3.0.2, cmake 2.8.12, dmd 0.1, freeipmi 1.3.3, gcc 4.8.2,
 277 gcc 4.8.2, gcc-cross-mips64el-linux-gnuabi64 4.8.2, gcc-stripped-tarball 4.8.2,
 278 gdb 7.6.2, gettext 0.18.3.1, glib 2.38.0, global 6.2.9, gmp 5.1.3,
 279 gnupg 2.0.22, gobject-introspection 1.38.0, grep 2.15, gsl 1.16,
 280 gtk+ 2.24.21, gtk+ 3.10.1, guile 2.0.9, guile 2.0.9, guile-xcb 1.2,
 281 harfbuzz 0.9.22, hello 2.9, iproute2 3.12.0, libdrm 2.4.46,
 282 libextractor 1.2, libjpeg 9, libmicrohttpd 0.9.32, lightning 2.0.2,
 283 linux-libre 3.12, lzip 1.15, make 4.0, mit-krb5 1.11.3, pari-gp 2.5.5,
 284 pixman 0.32.4, python 3.3.2, qemu 1.6.1,
 285 qemu-with-multiple-smb-shares 1.6.1, rcs 5.9.2, recutils 1.6, rsync 3.1.0,
 286 tar 1.27.1, texinfo 5.2, units 2.02, xorriso 1.3.2
 287
 288 *** Packages are now built with GCC 4.8.2 by default (was 4.7.3)
 289
 290 ** Native language support
 291 *** New ‘sr’ (Serbian) translation
 292 *** New ‘vi’ (Vietnamese) translation
 293 *** Updated ‘pt_BR’ (Brazilian Portuguese) translation
 294 ** Bugs fixed
 295 *** ‘guix pull’ compiles Guix deterministically and correctly
 296
 297 Previously, the build environment was not cleared in between ‘compile-file’
 298 calls, leading to build errors due to Guile bug http://bugs.gnu.org/15602 .
 299
 300 *** ‘guix package’ allows removal of a specific package output
 301     (http://bugs.gnu.org/15756)
 302 *** ‘guix-daemon’ always sets umask to 022
 303     (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-07/msg00033.html)
 304 *** Files referenced by environment variables are protected from GC
 305 *** Yet unbuilt packages get correctly installed (http://bugs.gnu.org/15283)
 306 *** ‘bootstrap-graph.{png,eps,pdf}’ built in srcdir (http://bugs.gnu.org/15640)
 307
 308 * Changes in 0.4 (since 0.3)
 309
 310 ** Package management
 311
 312 *** New ‘--list-generations’ and ‘--delete-generations’ options
 313
 314 The ‘guix package’ command has these two new options, which make it easier to
 315 deal with a profile’s generation.  See “Invoking guix package” in the manual.
 316
 317 *** New ‘guix-register’ program
 318
 319 This program allows the meta-data of a new store to be initialized, by
 320 copying info from an existing store.  It is mostly an internal tool.
 321
 322 ** Programming interfaces
 323
 324 *** New API to bootstrap Autotools-based packages
 325
 326 The (guix build-system gnu) has a new ‘dist-package’ procedure that takes a
 327 package object and source directory, and returns a new package object that
 328 runs ‘./bootstrap && make dist’ or anything similar.
 329
 330 *** ‘derivation’ and related procedures have a #:references-graphs parameter
 331
 332 This parameter instructs the build daemon to populate the derivation’s build
 333 tree with files containing the list of references of the given store files.
 334 This is useful to write code that copies a packages and all its dependencies
 335 to another storage device, such as a QEMU disk image.
 336
 337 *** Extended API to build a GNU system virtual machine image
 338
 339 The (gnu system vm) module has been augmented in many ways: the ‘qemu-image’
 340 procedure can now populate and initialize the image’s store; the new
 341 ‘system-qemu-image’ procedure returns a QEMU image that runs dmd as its init
 342 system, has ‘login’ running on several consoles, has a set of installed
 343 packages, and where Guix can be used.
 344
 345 New (gnu system …) modules have been added to handle the configuration of the
 346 various parts of a GNU/Linux system.  For instance, (gnu system dmd) provides
 347 support for instantiating dmd services; (gnu system linux) helps with Linux
 348 PAM configuration; and so on.
 349
 350 *** <derivation> objects supersede .drv file names in the API
 351
 352 ‘derivation’ and similar procedures no longer return two values (a
 353 <derivation> and a .drv file name); they now return a single value, which is
 354 a <derivation> object.  The <derivation> object embeds the corresponding .drv
 355 file name.  See “Derivations” in the manual for details.
 356
 357 ** GNU distribution
 358
 359 *** 60 new packages
 360
 361 apr, apr-util, cdparanoia, dbus-glib, dfc, dmd, dvdisaster, exiv2, fetchmail,
 362 freefont-ttf, freeglut, geeqie, git, gkrellm, glu, gnome-doc-utils,
 363 gst-plugins-base, gstreamer, guile-cairo, guile-lib, guile-xcb, guix, htop,
 364 itstool, lame, libextractor, libmicrohttpd, lightning, lzip, mingetty, mutt,
 365 net-base, net-tools, ocrad, pspp, python-babel, python-dateutil, python-pytz,
 366 python-setuptools, python-simplejson, python-wrapper, python2-babel,
 367 python2-dateutil, python2-mechanize, python2-pyicu, python2-pysqlite,
 368 python2-pytz, python2-setuptools, python2-simplejson, qemu-system-initrd,
 369 qemu-with-multiple-smb-shares, ripperx, shadow, ttf-bitstream-vera, units,
 370 valgrind, xmlto, xnee, yasm
 371
 372 *** 27 package updates
 373
 374 bigloo 4.0b, cairo 1.12.16, ddrescue 1.17, fontconfig 2.10.93, fplll 4.0.4,
 375 gcc 4.7.3, gcc 4.7.3, glibc 2.18, glibc 2.18, glibc-stripped-tarball 2.18,
 376 gnupg 2.0.21, gnutls 3.2.4, guile 2.0.9, guile 2.0.9, harfbuzz 0.9.21,
 377 imagemagick 6.8.6-9, libdrm 2.4.46, libgcrypt 1.5.3, libjpeg 9, libksba 1.3.0,
 378 linux-libre 3.11, m4 1.4.17, mpfrcx 0.4.2, pari-gp 2.5.4, python 2.7.5, python
 379 3.3.2, texlive 2013
 380
 381 *** Fontconfig font search path made more convenient
 382
 383 Fontconfig, the library used by many graphical applications, such as those
 384 based on GTK+, now knows where to find the default set of fonts.  Additional
 385 fonts installed in the user profile are automatically picked up.
 386
 387 *** More GUI applications
 388
 389 The ‘emacs’ and ‘racket’ packages are now linked against GTK+.  New GTK+
 390 applications have been added (see above.)
 391
 392 *** Packaging guidelines
 393
 394 The documentation of packaging guidelines has been augmented.  See the manual
 395 under “GNU Distribution”.
 396
 397 *** Support for Python 3 along with Python 2
 398
 399 Python 3 has been added to the distribution, and Python packages that support
 400 it are now built for both Python 2 and Python 3.  See the “Python Modules”
 401 section of the manual for details.
 402
 403 ** Internationalization
 404
 405 Updated translations: eo.
 406
 407 ** Bugs fixed
 408
 409 *** Workarounds for Guile 2.0.5 now work on Debian derivatives
 410 *** The dependency graph image has correct size in PDF output
 411 *** 'ldd' now works correctly on x86_64
 412 *** Xorg server test suite no longer fails (http://bugs.gnu.org/15392)
 413 *** module-init-tools now builds (http://bugs.gnu.org/15182, http://bugs.gnu.org/15187)
 414 *** Hop 2.4 builds with newer Bigloo (http://bugs.gnu.org/15194)
 415
 416 * Changes in 0.3 (since 0.2)
 417
 418 ** Package management
 419
 420 *** Cross-compilation support
 421
 422 Guix can now cross-build packages.  On the command-line, this is achieved with
 423 the new ‘--target’ command-line option of ‘guix build’.  At the Scheme level,
 424 the guts of this is the ‘package-cross-derivation’ procedure.  Core packages
 425 of the distribution can already be cross-compiled.  See the manual for
 426 details.
 427
 428 *** New ‘--max-silent-time’ option for “guix build” and “guix package”
 429
 430 See the manual for details.
 431
 432 *** New ‘--fallback’ option for “guix build” and “guix package”
 433
 434 This option instructs to fall back to local builds when the substituter fails
 435 to download a substitute.
 436
 437 *** New ‘--requisites’ option for “guix gc”
 438
 439 See the manual for details.
 440
 441 *** New ‘--key-download’ option for “guix refresh”
 442
 443 See the manual for details.
 444
 445 ** Programming interfaces
 446
 447 *** New ‘package-cross-derivation’ procedure in (guix derivations)
 448
 449 See the manual for details.
 450
 451 *** New ‘%current-target-system’ SRFI-39 parameter
 452
 453 This parameter is like ‘%current-system’, but for cross-compilation.  It
 454 allows code in package definitions (such as in the ‘arguments’ field) to know
 455 whether it is being cross-compiled, and what the target system is.
 456
 457 *** New (guix hash) module; new ‘open-sha256-port’ and ‘sha256-port’ procedures
 458
 459 This improves performance of SHA256 computations.
 460
 461
 462 ** GNU distribution
 463
 464 *** 33 new packages
 465
 466 alsa-lib, babel, cairo, cvs, gcal, gcc-cross-mips64el-linux-gnuabi64, gd,
 467 gdk-pixbuf, graphviz, grue-hunter, gtk+, gts, harfbuzz, imagemagick, iproute2,
 468 iptables, libspectre, mpg321, noweb, pango, plotutils, privoxy, pytz, racket,
 469 rubber, rush, strace, tk, torsocks, unrtf, vc-dwim, wordnet, xlockmore
 470
 471 *** 25 package updates
 472
 473 automake 1.14, ed 1.9, freeipmi 1.2.8, gawk 4.1.0, gcc 4.8.1, gettext 0.18.3,
 474 glib 2.37.1, gmp 5.1.2, gnutls 3.2.1, gzip 1.6, help2man 1.43.3, libapr 1.4.8,
 475 libaprutil 1.5.2, libassuan 2.1.1, libffi 3.0.13, libgc 7.2d, libgpg-error
 476 1.12, libidn 1.28, libpng 1.5.17, lout 3.40, lsh 2.1, nettle 2.7.1, qemu
 477 1.5.1, tzdata 2013d, xorriso 1.3.0
 478
 479 *** Binary packages now available for i686-linux
 480
 481 The build farm at http://hydra.gnu.org now provides 32-bit GNU/Linux binaries
 482 (i686-linux), in addition to the x86_64-linux binaries.  Both can be
 483 transparently used as substitutes for local builds on these platforms.
 484
 485 *** Debug info packages
 486
 487 Some packages now have a “debug” output containing debugging information.  The
 488 “debug” output can be used by GDB, and can be installed separately from the
 489 other outputs of the package.  See “Installing Debugging Files” in the manual.
 490
 491 *** Bootstrap binaries can be cross-compiled
 492
 493 The distribution can now be ported to new architectures (currently
 494 GNU/Linux-only) by cross-compiling the “bootstrap binaries”.  See “Porting”
 495 in the manual.
 496
 497 *** Bootstrapping documented
 498
 499 See “Bootstrapping” in the manual, for information on how the GNU
 500 distribution builds “from scratch”.
 501
 502 ** Internationalization
 503
 504 New translations: eo, pt_BR.
 505
 506 ** Bugs fixed
 507 *** “guix --help” now works when using Guile 2.0.5
 508 *** Binary substituter multi-threading and pipe issues fixed
 509
 510 These could lead to random substituter crashes while substituting a binary.
 511 See commits 0332386 and 101d9f3 for details.
 512
 513 *** Binary substituter gracefully handles lack of network connectivity
 514
 515 *** Daemon properly handles rebuilds of multiple-output derivations
 516
 517 Previously it would fail when rebuilding a multiple-output derivation when
 518 some (but not all) of its outputs were already present.  See
 519 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-06/msg00038.html and
 520 https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/122 .
 521
 522 *** ‘guix package -i foo:out’ no longer removes other outputs of ‘foo’
 523
 524 Previously only the ‘out’ output of package ‘foo’ would be kept in the
 525 profile.
 526
 527 *** Replacement (srfi srfi-37) provided if the user’s one is broken
 528
 529 When the user’s (srfi srfi-37) is affected by http://bugs.gnu.org/13176 (Guile
 530 < 2.0.9), a replacement with the bug fix is provided.  This bug would affect
 531 command-line argument processing in some cases.
 532
 533 * Changes in 0.2 (since 0.1)
 534
 535 ** Package management
 536
 537 *** Guix commands are now sub-commands of the “guix” program
 538
 539 Instead of typing “guix-package”, one now has to type “guix package”, and so
 540 on.  This has allowed us to homogenize the user interface and initial program
 541 setup, and to allow commands to be upgradable through “guix pull”.
 542
 543 *** New “guix package --upgrade” option
 544
 545 As the name implies, this option atomically upgrades all the packages
 546 installed in a profile or the set of packages matching a given regexp.
 547 See “Invoking guix package” in the manual.
 548
 549 *** New “guix package --search” option
 550
 551 Performs a full text search in package synopses and descriptions, and returns
 552 the matching packages in recutils format.  See “Invoking guix package” in the
 553 manual, for details.
 554
 555 *** New “guix pull” command
 556
 557 The command pulls the latest version of Guix–both the package management
 558 modules and the distribution.  See the manual for details.
 559
 560 *** New binary substituter
 561
 562 The “substituter” mechanism allows pre-built binaries to be transparently
 563 downloaded instead of performing a build locally.  Currently binaries are
 564 available for x86_64 Linux-based GNU systems from http://hydra.gnu.org.  The
 565 distribution is continuously built and binaries are made available from there.
 566
 567 See http://hydra.gnu.org/jobset/gnu/master under “Job status” for the list of
 568 available binary packages.
 569
 570 *** New “guix refresh” command
 571
 572 The command is used by Guix maintainers.  It automatically updates the
 573 distribution to the latest upstream releases of GNU software.
 574
 575 *** New “guix hash” command
 576
 577 Convenience command to compute the hash of a file.  See the manual for
 578 details.
 579
 580 *** Nix daemon code updated
 581
 582 The daemon code from Nix, used by the ‘guix-daemon’ command, has been updated
 583 to current Nix ‘master’.
 584
 585 ** Programming interfaces
 586
 587 *** (guix download) now supports HTTPS, using GnuTLS
 588
 589 It allows package source tarballs to be retrieved over HTTPS.
 590
 591 *** New ‘native-search-path’ and ‘search-path’ package fields
 592
 593 Packages can define in their ‘native-search-path’ field environment variables
 594 that define search paths and need to be set for proper functioning of the
 595 package.  For instance, GCC has ‘CPATH’ and ‘LIBRARY_PATH’ in its
 596 ‘native-search-path’, Perl has ‘PERL5LIB’, Python has ‘PYTHONPATH’, etc.
 597 These environment variables are automatically set when building a package that
 598 uses one of these.
 599
 600 *** Package inputs can be a function of the target system type
 601
 602 The ‘inputs’ field of a package can now be conditional on the value of
 603 (%current-system).  This is useful for packages that take system-dependent
 604 tarballs as inputs, such as GNU/MIT Scheme.
 605
 606 *** New build systems
 607
 608 The ‘perl-build-system’, ‘python-build-system’, and ‘cmake-build-system’ have
 609 been added.  They implement the standard build systems for Perl, Python, and
 610 CMake packages.
 611
 612 *** Tools to build Linux initrds, QEMU images, and more
 613
 614 The (gnu packages linux-initrd) module provides a procedure to build a Linux
 615 initrd (“initial RAM disk”).  The initrd embeds Guile, which is used to
 616 evaluate the given expression.  The example below returns an initrd that
 617 mounts the /proc file system and starts a REPL:
 618
 619   (expression->initrd
 620     '(begin
 621        (mkdir "/proc")
 622        (mount "none" "/proc" "proc")
 623        ((@ (system repl repl) start-repl))))
 624
 625 More examples in the linux-initrd.scm file.
 626
 627 Experimental interfaces to produce and use QEMU images are provided by the
 628 (gnu system vm) module.  For instance, the
 629 ‘expression->derivation-in-linux-vm’ evaluates the given Scheme expression in
 630 a QEMU virtual machine running the Linux kernel and Guile.
 631
 632 ** GNU distribution
 633
 634 Many updates and additions have been made to the distribution.  Here are the
 635 highlights.
 636
 637 *** Major updates
 638
 639 GCC 4.7.3 (the default) and GCC 4.8.0, Binutils 2.23.2, Guile 2.0.9,
 640 Coreutils 8.20, GDB 7.6, Texinfo 5.1.
 641
 642 *** Noteworthy new packages
 643
 644 TeXLive, Xorg, GNU GRUB, GNU Parted, QEMU and QEMU-KVM, Avahi, Bigloo,
 645 CHICKEN, Scheme48, Hugs, Python, Lua, Samba.