/nix/store/8lz9yc6zgmc0vlqmn2ipcpkjlmbi51vv-glibc-2.3.4
- The concept of fixed-output derivations has been formalised.
Previously, functions such as `fetchurl` in Nixpkgs used a hack
(namely, explicitly specifying a store path hash) to prevent changes
to, say, the URL of the file from propagating upwards through the
dependency graph, causing rebuilds of everything. This can now be
done cleanly by specifying the `outputHash` and `outputHashAlgo`
attributes. Nix itself checks that the content of the output has the
specified hash. (This is important for maintaining certain
invariants necessary for future work on secure shared stores.)
- One-click installation :-) It is now possible to install any
top-level component in Nixpkgs directly, through the web — see,
e.g., <http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nixpkgs-0.8/>. All you
have to do is associate `/nix/bin/nix-install-package` with the MIME
type `application/nix-package` (or the extension `.nixpkg`), and
clicking on a package link will cause it to be installed, with all
appropriate dependencies. If you just want to install some specific
application, this is easier than subscribing to a channel.
- `nix-store -r
PATHS` now builds all the derivations PATHS in parallel. Previously
it did them sequentially (though exploiting possible parallelism
between subderivations). This is nice for build farms.
- `nix-channel` has new operations `--list` and `--remove`.
- New ways of installing components into user environments:
- Copy from another user environment:
$ nix-env -i --from-profile .../other-profile firefox
- Install a store derivation directly (bypassing the Nix
expression language entirely):
$ nix-env -i /nix/store/z58v41v21xd3...-aterm-2.3.1.drv
(This is used to implement `nix-install-package`, which is
therefore immune to evolution in the Nix expression language.)
- Install an already built store path directly:
$ nix-env -i /nix/store/hsyj5pbn0d9i...-aterm-2.3.1
- Install the result of a Nix expression specified as a
command-line argument: