GNU Guix 0.3 released

[Ludovic Courtès]

We are pleased to announce GNU Guix version 0.3, the third alpha
release, representing 254 commits by 6 people over 2 months.


• About

  GNU Guix is a functional package manager and distribution of
  the GNU system.

  In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports
  transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package
  management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection.  Guix uses
  low-level mechanisms from the Nix package manager, with Guile Scheme
  programming interfaces.

  At this stage Guix can be used on top of an i686 or x86_64
  GNU/Linux system.  Future versions will stand alone.

  http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/


• Download

  Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature[*]:
    ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/guix-0.3.tar.gz
    ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/guix-0.3.tar.gz.sig

  Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
    http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

  Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:

  1112e55273ce47cb89ccbdedb2d431f6  guix-0.3.tar.gz
  6a3f3c469a8a6bb5316f632a54ffb5df97d3911a  guix-0.3.tar.gz

  [*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
  .sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
  and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

    gpg --verify guix-0.3.tar.gz.sig

  If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
  then run this command to import it:

    gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys EA52ECF4

  and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

  This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
    Autoconf 2.69
    Automake 1.14
    Makeinfo 5.1

  Guix users can upgrade by running “guix pull”.


• Changes since version 0.2 (excerpt from the NEWS file)

  ** Package management

  *** Cross-compilation support

  Guix can now cross-build packages.  On the command-line, this is achieved with
  the new ‘--target’ command-line option of ‘guix build’.  At the Scheme level,
  the guts of this is the ‘package-cross-derivation’ procedure.  Core packages
  of the distribution can already be cross-compiled.  See the manual for
  details.

  *** New ‘--max-silent-time’ option for “guix build” and “guix package”

  See the manual for details.

  *** New ‘--fallback’ option for “guix build” and “guix package”

  This option instructs to fall back to local builds when the substituter fails
  to download a substitute.

  *** New ‘--requisites’ option for “guix gc”

  See the manual for details.

  *** New ‘--key-download’ option for “guix refresh”

  See the manual for details.

  ** Programming interfaces

  *** New ‘package-cross-derivation’ procedure in (guix derivations)

  See the manual for details.

  *** New ‘%current-target-system’ SRFI-39 parameter

  This parameter is like ‘%current-system’, but for cross-compilation.  It
  allows code in package definitions (such as in the ‘arguments’ field) to know
  whether it is being cross-compiled, and what the target system is.

  *** New (guix hash) module; new ‘open-sha256-port’ and ‘sha256-port’ 
procedures

  This improves performance of SHA256 computations.


  ** GNU distribution

  *** 33 new packages

  alsa-lib, babel, cairo, cvs, gcal, gcc-cross-mips64el-linux-gnuabi64, gd,
  gdk-pixbuf, graphviz, grue-hunter, gtk+, gts, harfbuzz, imagemagick, iproute2,
  iptables, libspectre, mpg321, noweb, pango, plotutils, privoxy, pytz, racket,
  rubber, rush, strace, tk, torsocks, unrtf, vc-dwim, wordnet, xlockmore

  *** 25 package updates

  automake 1.14, ed 1.9, freeipmi 1.2.8, gawk 4.1.0, gcc 4.8.1, gettext 0.18.3,
  glib 2.37.1, gmp 5.1.2, gnutls 3.2.1, gzip 1.6, help2man 1.43.3, libapr 1.4.8,
  libaprutil 1.5.2, libassuan 2.1.1, libffi 3.0.13, libgc 7.2d, libgpg-error
  1.12, libidn 1.28, libpng 1.5.17, lout 3.40, lsh 2.1, nettle 2.7.1, qemu
  1.5.1, tzdata 2013d, xorriso 1.3.0

  *** Binary packages now available for i686-linux

  The build farm at http://hydra.gnu.org now provides 32-bit GNU/Linux binaries
  (i686-linux), in addition to the x86_64-linux binaries.  Both can be
  transparently used as substitutes for local builds on these platforms.

  *** Debug info packages

  Some packages now have a “debug” output containing debugging information.  The
  “debug” output can be used by GDB, and can be installed separately from the
  other outputs of the package.  See “Installing Debugging Files” in the manual.

  *** Bootstrap binaries can be cross-compiled

  The distribution can now be ported to new architectures (currently
  GNU/Linux-only) by cross-compiling the “bootstrap binaries”.  See “Porting”
  in the manual.

  *** Bootstrapping documented

  See “Bootstrapping” in the manual, for information on how the GNU
  distribution builds “from scratch”.

  ** Internationalization

  New translations: eo, pt_BR.

  ** Bugs fixed
  *** “guix --help” now works when using Guile 2.0.5
  *** Binary substituter multi-threading and pipe issues fixed

  These could lead to random substituter crashes while substituting a binary.
  See commits 0332386 and 101d9f3 for details.

  *** Binary substituter gracefully handles lack of network connectivity

  *** Daemon properly handles rebuilds of multiple-output derivations

  Previously it would fail when rebuilding a multiple-output derivation when
  some (but not all) of its outputs were already present.  See
  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-06/msg00038.html and
  https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/122 .

  *** ‘guix package -i foo:out’ no longer removes other outputs of ‘foo’

  Previously only the ‘out’ output of package ‘foo’ would be kept in the
  profile.

  *** Replacement (srfi srfi-37) provided if the user’s one is broken

  When the user’s (srfi srfi-37) is affected by http://bugs.gnu.org/13176 (Guile
  < 2.0.9), a replacement with the bug fix is provided.  This bug would affect
  command-line argument processing in some cases.


Please report bugs to address@hidden
Join address@hidden for discussions.

Ludovic, on behalf of the Guix team.

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