NEWS

   1                                                               -*- org -*-
   2 #+TITLE: Guix NEWS – history of user-visible changes
   3 #+STARTUP: content hidestars
   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
  13 * Changes in 0.5 (since 0.4)
  14 ** Package management
  15 *** GNU package descriptions synchronized with the ‘gnumaint’ repository
  16
  17 In addition to synopses, descriptions of GNU packages are now kept in sync
  18 with the ‘gnumaint’ repository, which is the canonical place for GNU package
  19 meta-data.
  20
  21 ** Programming interfaces
  22 *** Patches are now listed as part of ‘origin’
  23
  24 The ‘origin’ form supports two new fields: ‘patches’ (list of patches), and
  25 ‘snippet’ (code snippet to modify the source.)  These are applied when running
  26 ‘guix build --source’.  See “Defining Packages” in the manual.
  27
  28 *** New (guix monads) monadic interface to operate on the store
  29
  30 See “The Store Monad” in the manual.  The (gnu system …) modules have been
  31 rewritten to use this monadic interface.
  32
  33 *** New (guix profiles) module
  34
  35 It provides an API for dealing with profiles, as with the ‘guix package’
  36 command.
  37
  38 *** New (gnu system) module
  39
  40 This module provides a generic way to describe the system’s configuration,
  41 and to instantiate it, regardless of the final medium (QEMU image, etc.)
  42 See “System Configuration” in the manual.
  43
  44 This is work in progress.  Send feedback to guix-devel@gnu.org!
  45
  46 *** ‘build-expression->derivation’ uses more parameters
  47
  48 Some positional parameters have been changed to keyword parameters.
  49 See “Derivations” in the manual.
  50
  51 ** GNU distribution
  52 *** New port to the Loongson MIPS64 processors, n32 ABI (‘mips64el-linux’)
  53
  54 Bootstrap binaries have been built for that architecture, and several
  55 Loongson-specific patches not yet available upstream have been applied to core
  56 packages.  See “GNU Distribution” and “Porting” in the manual.
  57
  58 Pre-built binaries are not yet available via hydra.gnu.org, so Guix will
  59 build from source on this platform.
  60
  61 *** 110 new packages
  62
  63 acct, alive, alsa-utils, apl, at-spi2-atk, at-spi2-core, atkmm, autogen,
  64 automoc4, brasero, bridge-utils, cairomm, catkin, complexity, evince, ffmpeg,
  65 fftw, ftgl, gcc-objc, gcc-objc++, gccgo, gcl, gfortran, glibmm, glpk,
  66 gnome-icon-theme, gnu-pw-mgr, gp2c, gpgme, gsettings-desktop-schemas, gtkmm,
  67 gtksourceview, guile-ssh, guile-wm, gvpe, hicolor-icon-theme, httpd, icecat,
  68 icon-naming-utils, json-c, lapack, libcanberra, libcap, libgnome-keyring,
  69 libmikmod, libnl, libnotify, libsamplerate, libsigc++, libsndfile, libssh,
  70 libtheora, libxkbcommon, mercurial, mtools, netcat, pangomm, parallel,
  71 pavucontrol, pciutils, pem, perl-encode-locale, perl-file-list,
  72 perl-file-listing, perl-html-parser, perl-html-tagset, perl-http-cookies,
  73 perl-http-daemon, perl-http-date, perl-http-message, perl-http-negotiate,
  74 perl-io-html, perl-libwww, perl-libxml, perl-lwp-mediatypes, perl-net-http,
  75 perl-uri, perl-www-robotrules, perl-xml-dom, perl-xml-regexp, perl-xml-simple,
  76 phonon, powertop, pulseaudio, python2-dogtail, python2-empy, qemu-headless,
  77 qt, qt, raptor2, scons, sdl, sdl-gfx, sdl-image, sdl-mixer, sdl-net, sdl-ttf,
  78 sdl2, serveez, shared-mime-info, sharutils, skribilo, slim, soprano, swig,
  79 xcb-util, xcb-util-image, xcb-util-keysyms, xcb-util-renderutil, xcb-util-wm
  80
  81 *** 47 package updates
  82
  83 atk 2.10.0, bison 3.0.2, cmake 2.8.12, dmd 0.1, freeipmi 1.3.3, gcc 4.8.2,
  84 gcc 4.8.2, gcc-cross-mips64el-linux-gnuabi64 4.8.2, gcc-stripped-tarball 4.8.2,
  85 gdb 7.6.2, gettext 0.18.3.1, glib 2.38.0, global 6.2.9, gmp 5.1.3,
  86 gnupg 2.0.22, gobject-introspection 1.38.0, grep 2.15, gsl 1.16,
  87 gtk+ 2.24.21, gtk+ 3.10.1, guile 2.0.9, guile 2.0.9, guile-xcb 1.2,
  88 harfbuzz 0.9.22, hello 2.9, iproute2 3.12.0, libdrm 2.4.46,
  89 libextractor 1.2, libjpeg 9, libmicrohttpd 0.9.32, lightning 2.0.2,
  90 linux-libre 3.12, lzip 1.15, make 4.0, mit-krb5 1.11.3, pari-gp 2.5.5,
  91 pixman 0.32.4, python 3.3.2, qemu 1.6.1,
  92 qemu-with-multiple-smb-shares 1.6.1, rcs 5.9.2, recutils 1.6, rsync 3.1.0,
  93 tar 1.27.1, texinfo 5.2, units 2.02, xorriso 1.3.2
  94
  95 *** Packages are now built with GCC 4.8.2 by default (was 4.7.3)
  96
  97 ** Native language support
  98 *** New ‘sr’ (Serbian) translation
  99 *** New ‘vi’ (Vietnamese) translation
 100 *** Updated ‘pt_BR’ (Brazilian Portuguese) translation
 101 ** Bugs fixed
 102 *** ‘guix pull’ compiles Guix deterministically and correctly
 103
 104 Previously, the build environment was not cleared in between ‘compile-file’
 105 calls, leading to build errors due to Guile bug http://bugs.gnu.org/15602 .
 106
 107 *** ‘guix package’ allows removal of a specific package output
 108     (http://bugs.gnu.org/15756)
 109 *** ‘guix-daemon’ always sets umask to 022
 110     (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-07/msg00033.html)
 111 *** Files referenced by environment variables are protected from GC
 112 *** Yet unbuilt packages get correctly installed (http://bugs.gnu.org/15283)
 113 *** ‘bootstrap-graph.{png,eps,pdf}’ built in srcdir (http://bugs.gnu.org/15640)
 114
 115 * Changes in 0.4 (since 0.3)
 116
 117 ** Package management
 118
 119 *** New ‘--list-generations’ and ‘--delete-generations’ options
 120
 121 The ‘guix package’ command has these two new options, which make it easier to
 122 deal with a profile’s generation.  See “Invoking guix package” in the manual.
 123
 124 *** New ‘guix-register’ program
 125
 126 This program allows the meta-data of a new store to be initialized, by
 127 copying info from an existing store.  It is mostly an internal tool.
 128
 129 ** Programming interfaces
 130
 131 *** New API to bootstrap Autotools-based packages
 132
 133 The (guix build-system gnu) has a new ‘dist-package’ procedure that takes a
 134 package object and source directory, and returns a new package object that
 135 runs ‘./bootstrap && make dist’ or anything similar.
 136
 137 *** ‘derivation’ and related procedures have a #:references-graphs parameter
 138
 139 This parameter instructs the build daemon to populate the derivation’s build
 140 tree with files containing the list of references of the given store files.
 141 This is useful to write code that copies a packages and all its dependencies
 142 to another storage device, such as a QEMU disk image.
 143
 144 *** Extended API to build a GNU system virtual machine image
 145
 146 The (gnu system vm) module has been augmented in many ways: the ‘qemu-image’
 147 procedure can now populate and initialize the image’s store; the new
 148 ‘system-qemu-image’ procedure returns a QEMU image that runs dmd as its init
 149 system, has ‘login’ running on several consoles, has a set of installed
 150 packages, and where Guix can be used.
 151
 152 New (gnu system …) modules have been added to handle the configuration of the
 153 various parts of a GNU/Linux system.  For instance, (gnu system dmd) provides
 154 support for instantiating dmd services; (gnu system linux) helps with Linux
 155 PAM configuration; and so on.
 156
 157 *** <derivation> objects supersede .drv file names in the API
 158
 159 ‘derivation’ and similar procedures no longer return two values (a
 160 <derivation> and a .drv file name); they now return a single value, which is
 161 a <derivation> object.  The <derivation> object embeds the corresponding .drv
 162 file name.  See “Derivations” in the manual for details.
 163
 164 ** GNU distribution
 165
 166 *** 60 new packages
 167
 168 apr, apr-util, cdparanoia, dbus-glib, dfc, dmd, dvdisaster, exiv2, fetchmail,
 169 freefont-ttf, freeglut, geeqie, git, gkrellm, glu, gnome-doc-utils,
 170 gst-plugins-base, gstreamer, guile-cairo, guile-lib, guile-xcb, guix, htop,
 171 itstool, lame, libextractor, libmicrohttpd, lightning, lzip, mingetty, mutt,
 172 net-base, net-tools, ocrad, pspp, python-babel, python-dateutil, python-pytz,
 173 python-setuptools, python-simplejson, python-wrapper, python2-babel,
 174 python2-dateutil, python2-mechanize, python2-pyicu, python2-pysqlite,
 175 python2-pytz, python2-setuptools, python2-simplejson, qemu-system-initrd,
 176 qemu-with-multiple-smb-shares, ripperx, shadow, ttf-bitstream-vera, units,
 177 valgrind, xmlto, xnee, yasm
 178
 179 *** 27 package updates
 180
 181 bigloo 4.0b, cairo 1.12.16, ddrescue 1.17, fontconfig 2.10.93, fplll 4.0.4,
 182 gcc 4.7.3, gcc 4.7.3, glibc 2.18, glibc 2.18, glibc-stripped-tarball 2.18,
 183 gnupg 2.0.21, gnutls 3.2.4, guile 2.0.9, guile 2.0.9, harfbuzz 0.9.21,
 184 imagemagick 6.8.6-9, libdrm 2.4.46, libgcrypt 1.5.3, libjpeg 9, libksba 1.3.0,
 185 linux-libre 3.11, m4 1.4.17, mpfrcx 0.4.2, pari-gp 2.5.4, python 2.7.5, python
 186 3.3.2, texlive 2013
 187
 188 *** Fontconfig font search path made more convenient
 189
 190 Fontconfig, the library used by many graphical applications, such as those
 191 based on GTK+, now knows where to find the default set of fonts.  Additional
 192 fonts installed in the user profile are automatically picked up.
 193
 194 *** More GUI applications
 195
 196 The ‘emacs’ and ‘racket’ packages are now linked against GTK+.  New GTK+
 197 applications have been added (see above.)
 198
 199 *** Packaging guidelines
 200
 201 The documentation of packaging guidelines has been augmented.  See the manual
 202 under “GNU Distribution”.
 203
 204 *** Support for Python 3 along with Python 2
 205
 206 Python 3 has been added to the distribution, and Python packages that support
 207 it are now built for both Python 2 and Python 3.  See the “Python Modules”
 208 section of the manual for details.
 209
 210 ** Internationalization
 211
 212 Updated translations: eo.
 213
 214 ** Bugs fixed
 215
 216 *** Workarounds for Guile 2.0.5 now work on Debian derivatives
 217 *** The dependency graph image has correct size in PDF output
 218 *** 'ldd' now works correctly on x86_64
 219 *** Xorg server test suite no longer fails (http://bugs.gnu.org/15392)
 220 *** module-init-tools now builds (http://bugs.gnu.org/15182, http://bugs.gnu.org/15187)
 221 *** Hop 2.4 builds with newer Bigloo (http://bugs.gnu.org/15194)
 222
 223 * Changes in 0.3 (since 0.2)
 224
 225 ** Package management
 226
 227 *** Cross-compilation support
 228
 229 Guix can now cross-build packages.  On the command-line, this is achieved with
 230 the new ‘--target’ command-line option of ‘guix build’.  At the Scheme level,
 231 the guts of this is the ‘package-cross-derivation’ procedure.  Core packages
 232 of the distribution can already be cross-compiled.  See the manual for
 233 details.
 234
 235 *** New ‘--max-silent-time’ option for “guix build” and “guix package”
 236
 237 See the manual for details.
 238
 239 *** New ‘--fallback’ option for “guix build” and “guix package”
 240
 241 This option instructs to fall back to local builds when the substituter fails
 242 to download a substitute.
 243
 244 *** New ‘--requisites’ option for “guix gc”
 245
 246 See the manual for details.
 247
 248 *** New ‘--key-download’ option for “guix refresh”
 249
 250 See the manual for details.
 251
 252 ** Programming interfaces
 253
 254 *** New ‘package-cross-derivation’ procedure in (guix derivations)
 255
 256 See the manual for details.
 257
 258 *** New ‘%current-target-system’ SRFI-39 parameter
 259
 260 This parameter is like ‘%current-system’, but for cross-compilation.  It
 261 allows code in package definitions (such as in the ‘arguments’ field) to know
 262 whether it is being cross-compiled, and what the target system is.
 263
 264 *** New (guix hash) module; new ‘open-sha256-port’ and ‘sha256-port’ procedures
 265
 266 This improves performance of SHA256 computations.
 267
 268
 269 ** GNU distribution
 270
 271 *** 33 new packages
 272
 273 alsa-lib, babel, cairo, cvs, gcal, gcc-cross-mips64el-linux-gnuabi64, gd,
 274 gdk-pixbuf, graphviz, grue-hunter, gtk+, gts, harfbuzz, imagemagick, iproute2,
 275 iptables, libspectre, mpg321, noweb, pango, plotutils, privoxy, pytz, racket,
 276 rubber, rush, strace, tk, torsocks, unrtf, vc-dwim, wordnet, xlockmore
 277
 278 *** 25 package updates
 279
 280 automake 1.14, ed 1.9, freeipmi 1.2.8, gawk 4.1.0, gcc 4.8.1, gettext 0.18.3,
 281 glib 2.37.1, gmp 5.1.2, gnutls 3.2.1, gzip 1.6, help2man 1.43.3, libapr 1.4.8,
 282 libaprutil 1.5.2, libassuan 2.1.1, libffi 3.0.13, libgc 7.2d, libgpg-error
 283 1.12, libidn 1.28, libpng 1.5.17, lout 3.40, lsh 2.1, nettle 2.7.1, qemu
 284 1.5.1, tzdata 2013d, xorriso 1.3.0
 285
 286 *** Binary packages now available for i686-linux
 287
 288 The build farm at http://hydra.gnu.org now provides 32-bit GNU/Linux binaries
 289 (i686-linux), in addition to the x86_64-linux binaries.  Both can be
 290 transparently used as substitutes for local builds on these platforms.
 291
 292 *** Debug info packages
 293
 294 Some packages now have a “debug” output containing debugging information.  The
 295 “debug” output can be used by GDB, and can be installed separately from the
 296 other outputs of the package.  See “Installing Debugging Files” in the manual.
 297
 298 *** Bootstrap binaries can be cross-compiled
 299
 300 The distribution can now be ported to new architectures (currently
 301 GNU/Linux-only) by cross-compiling the “bootstrap binaries”.  See “Porting”
 302 in the manual.
 303
 304 *** Bootstrapping documented
 305
 306 See “Bootstrapping” in the manual, for information on how the GNU
 307 distribution builds “from scratch”.
 308
 309 ** Internationalization
 310
 311 New translations: eo, pt_BR.
 312
 313 ** Bugs fixed
 314 *** “guix --help” now works when using Guile 2.0.5
 315 *** Binary substituter multi-threading and pipe issues fixed
 316
 317 These could lead to random substituter crashes while substituting a binary.
 318 See commits 0332386 and 101d9f3 for details.
 319
 320 *** Binary substituter gracefully handles lack of network connectivity
 321
 322 *** Daemon properly handles rebuilds of multiple-output derivations
 323
 324 Previously it would fail when rebuilding a multiple-output derivation when
 325 some (but not all) of its outputs were already present.  See
 326 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-06/msg00038.html and
 327 https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/122 .
 328
 329 *** ‘guix package -i foo:out’ no longer removes other outputs of ‘foo’
 330
 331 Previously only the ‘out’ output of package ‘foo’ would be kept in the
 332 profile.
 333
 334 *** Replacement (srfi srfi-37) provided if the user’s one is broken
 335
 336 When the user’s (srfi srfi-37) is affected by http://bugs.gnu.org/13176 (Guile
 337 < 2.0.9), a replacement with the bug fix is provided.  This bug would affect
 338 command-line argument processing in some cases.
 339
 340 * Changes in 0.2 (since 0.1)
 341
 342 ** Package management
 343
 344 *** Guix commands are now sub-commands of the “guix” program
 345
 346 Instead of typing “guix-package”, one now has to type “guix package”, and so
 347 on.  This has allowed us to homogenize the user interface and initial program
 348 setup, and to allow commands to be upgradable through “guix pull”.
 349
 350 *** New “guix package --upgrade” option
 351
 352 As the name implies, this option atomically upgrades all the packages
 353 installed in a profile or the set of packages matching a given regexp.
 354 See “Invoking guix package” in the manual.
 355
 356 *** New “guix package --search” option
 357
 358 Performs a full text search in package synopses and descriptions, and returns
 359 the matching packages in recutils format.  See “Invoking guix package” in the
 360 manual, for details.
 361
 362 *** New “guix pull” command
 363
 364 The command pulls the latest version of Guix–both the package management
 365 modules and the distribution.  See the manual for details.
 366
 367 *** New binary substituter
 368
 369 The “substituter” mechanism allows pre-built binaries to be transparently
 370 downloaded instead of performing a build locally.  Currently binaries are
 371 available for x86_64 Linux-based GNU systems from http://hydra.gnu.org.  The
 372 distribution is continuously built and binaries are made available from there.
 373
 374 See http://hydra.gnu.org/jobset/gnu/master under “Job status” for the list of
 375 available binary packages.
 376
 377 *** New “guix refresh” command
 378
 379 The command is used by Guix maintainers.  It automatically updates the
 380 distribution to the latest upstream releases of GNU software.
 381
 382 *** New “guix hash” command
 383
 384 Convenience command to compute the hash of a file.  See the manual for
 385 details.
 386
 387 *** Nix daemon code updated
 388
 389 The daemon code from Nix, used by the ‘guix-daemon’ command, has been updated
 390 to current Nix ‘master’.
 391
 392 ** Programming interfaces
 393
 394 *** (guix download) now supports HTTPS, using GnuTLS
 395
 396 It allows package source tarballs to be retrieved over HTTPS.
 397
 398 *** New ‘native-search-path’ and ‘search-path’ package fields
 399
 400 Packages can define in their ‘native-search-path’ field environment variables
 401 that define search paths and need to be set for proper functioning of the
 402 package.  For instance, GCC has ‘CPATH’ and ‘LIBRARY_PATH’ in its
 403 ‘native-search-path’, Perl has ‘PERL5LIB’, Python has ‘PYTHONPATH’, etc.
 404 These environment variables are automatically set when building a package that
 405 uses one of these.
 406
 407 *** Package inputs can be a function of the target system type
 408
 409 The ‘inputs’ field of a package can now be conditional on the value of
 410 (%current-system).  This is useful for packages that take system-dependent
 411 tarballs as inputs, such as GNU/MIT Scheme.
 412
 413 *** New build systems
 414
 415 The ‘perl-build-system’, ‘python-build-system’, and ‘cmake-build-system’ have
 416 been added.  They implement the standard build systems for Perl, Python, and
 417 CMake packages.
 418
 419 *** Tools to build Linux initrds, QEMU images, and more
 420
 421 The (gnu packages linux-initrd) module provides a procedure to build a Linux
 422 initrd (“initial RAM disk”).  The initrd embeds Guile, which is used to
 423 evaluate the given expression.  The example below returns an initrd that
 424 mounts the /proc file system and starts a REPL:
 425
 426   (expression->initrd
 427     '(begin
 428        (mkdir "/proc")
 429        (mount "none" "/proc" "proc")
 430        ((@ (system repl repl) start-repl))))
 431
 432 More examples in the linux-initrd.scm file.
 433
 434 Experimental interfaces to produce and use QEMU images are provided by the
 435 (gnu system vm) module.  For instance, the
 436 ‘expression->derivation-in-linux-vm’ evaluates the given Scheme expression in
 437 a QEMU virtual machine running the Linux kernel and Guile.
 438
 439 ** GNU distribution
 440
 441 Many updates and additions have been made to the distribution.  Here are the
 442 highlights.
 443
 444 *** Major updates
 445
 446 GCC 4.7.3 (the default) and GCC 4.8.0, Binutils 2.23.2, Guile 2.0.9,
 447 Coreutils 8.20, GDB 7.6, Texinfo 5.1.
 448
 449 *** Noteworthy new packages
 450
 451 TeXLive, Xorg, GNU GRUB, GNU Parted, QEMU and QEMU-KVM, Avahi, Bigloo,
 452 CHICKEN, Scheme48, Hugs, Python, Lua, Samba.