Re: GNU Guix 0.4 released

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Fantastic, congratulations to all involved and kudos to ludo, andreas and 
nikita in particular for you commitment!

Best wishes, 

Alex

On Fri Sep 27 16:17:42 2013 Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> wrote:
> We are pleased to celebrate GNU’s 30th anniversary with the release of
> GNU Guix version 0.4, representing 300 commits by 5 people over 2
> months.
> 
> This release comes with a QEMU virtual machine image that demonstrates
> preliminary work toward building a stand-alone GNU system with Guix.
> The image uses the GNU Linux-Libre kernel and the GNU dmd init system.
> It is console-only, and may be used primarily to try out Guix.
> 
> 
> • 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, or in a virtual machine.   Future versions will stand alone.
> 
>     http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/
> 
> 
> • Download
> 
>     Here are the compressed sources and QEMU virtual machine image, along
>     with GPG detached signatures[*]:
>         ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/guix-0.4.tar.gz
>         ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/guix-0.4.tar.gz.sig
> 
>         ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/gnu-system-demo-0.4.img.gz
>         ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/gnu-system-demo-0.4.img.gz.sig
> 
>     Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
>         http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html
> 
>     Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:
> 
>     263c0b05ac3978c98eab46ce1cd197bb   guix-0.4.tar.gz
>     cbe4740523d5a9a4e11bac031ea4e1c4145f6b11   guix-0.4.tar.gz
> 
>     d48c22847ea9d7f3fb6b268ebb3aa020   gnu-system-demo-0.4.img.gz
>     23472f17d94fc8e7f18fce28b6736668aa85859c   gnu-system-demo-0.4.img.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-0.4.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”.
> 
> 
>     To use the virtual machine image, run QEMU like this:
> 
>         qemu-system-x86_64 -m 256 -net nic,model=e1000 -net user \
>                   gnu-system-demo-0.4.img
> 
>     This enables networking support, which is useful when using Guix
>     inside of it.
> 
> 
> • Changes since version 0.3 (excerpt from the NEWS file)
> 
>     ** Package management
> 
>     *** New ‘--list-generations’ and ‘--delete-generations’ options
> 
>     The ‘guix package’ command has these two new options, which make it
> easier to   deal with a profile’s generation.   See “Invoking guix
> package” in the manual.
> 
>     *** New ‘guix-register’ program
> 
>     This program allows the meta-data of a new store to be initialized, by
>     copying info from an existing store.   It is mostly an internal tool.
> 
>     ** Programming interfaces
> 
>     *** New API to bootstrap Autotools-based packages
> 
>     The (guix build-system gnu) has a new ‘dist-package’ procedure that
> takes a   package object and source directory, and returns a new package
> object that   runs ‘./bootstrap && make dist’ or anything similar.
> 
>     *** ‘derivation’ and related procedures have a #:references-graphs
> parameter
> 
>     This parameter instructs the build daemon to populate the derivation’s
> build   tree with files containing the list of references of the given
> store files.   This is useful to write code that copies a packages and
> all its dependencies   to another storage device, such as a QEMU disk
> image.
> 
>     *** Extended API to build a GNU system virtual machine image
> 
>     The (gnu system vm) module has been augmented in many ways: the
> ‘qemu-image’   procedure can now populate and initialize the image’s
> store; the new   ‘system-qemu-image’ procedure returns a QEMU image that
> runs dmd as its init   system, has ‘login’ running on several consoles,
> has a set of installed   packages, and where Guix can be used.
> 
>     New (gnu system …) modules have been added to handle the configuration
> of the   various parts of a GNU/Linux system.   For instance, (gnu system
> dmd) provides   support for instantiating dmd services; (gnu system
> linux) helps with Linux   PAM configuration; and so on.
> 
>     *** <derivation> objects supersede .drv file names in the API
> 
>     ‘derivation’ and similar procedures no longer return two values (a
>     <derivation> and a .drv file name); they now return a single value,
> which is   a <derivation> object.   The <derivation> object embeds the
> corresponding .drv   file name.   See “Derivations” in the manual for
> details.
> 
>     ** GNU distribution
> 
>     *** 60 new packages
> 
>     apr, apr-util, cdparanoia, dbus-glib, dfc, dmd, dvdisaster, exiv2,
> fetchmail,   freefont-ttf, freeglut, geeqie, git, gkrellm, glu,
> gnome-doc-utils,   gst-plugins-base, gstreamer, guile-cairo, guile-lib,
> guile-xcb, guix, htop,   itstool, lame, libextractor, libmicrohttpd,
> lightning, lzip, mingetty, mutt,   net-base, net-tools, ocrad, pspp,
> python-babel, python-dateutil, python-pytz,   python-setuptools,
> python-simplejson, python-wrapper, python2-babel,   python2-dateutil,
> python2-mechanize, python2-pyicu, python2-pysqlite,   python2-pytz,
> python2-setuptools, python2-simplejson, qemu-system-initrd, 
> qemu-with-multiple-smb-shares, ripperx, shadow, ttf-bitstream-vera,
> units,   valgrind, xmlto, xnee, yasm
> 
>     *** 27 package updates
> 
>     bigloo 4.0b, cairo 1.12.16, ddrescue 1.17, fontconfig 2.10.93, fplll
> 4.0.4,   gcc 4.7.3, gcc 4.7.3, glibc 2.18, glibc 2.18,
> glibc-stripped-tarball 2.18,   gnupg 2.0.21, gnutls 3.2.4, guile 2.0.9,
> guile 2.0.9, harfbuzz 0.9.21,   imagemagick 6.8.6-9, libdrm 2.4.46,
> libgcrypt 1.5.3, libjpeg 9, libksba 1.3.0,   linux-libre 3.11, m4 1.4.17,
> mpfrcx 0.4.2, pari-gp 2.5.4, python 2.7.5, python   3.3.2, texlive 2013
> 
>     *** Fontconfig font search path made more convenient
> 
>     Fontconfig, the library used by many graphical applications, such as
> those   based on GTK+, now knows where to find the default set of fonts. 
> Additional   fonts installed in the user profile are automatically picked
> up.
> 
>     *** More GUI applications
> 
>     The ‘emacs’ and ‘racket’ packages are now linked against GTK+.   New
> GTK+   applications have been added (see above.)
> 
>     *** Packaging guidelines
> 
>     The documentation of packaging guidelines has been augmented.   See the
> manual   under “GNU Distribution”.
> 
>     *** Support for Python 3 along with Python 2
> 
>     Python 3 has been added to the distribution, and Python packages that
> support   it are now built for both Python 2 and Python 3.   See the
> “Python Modules”   section of the manual for details.
> 
>     ** Internationalization
> 
>     Updated translations: eo.
> 
>     ** Bugs fixed
> 
>     *** Workarounds for Guile 2.0.5 now work on Debian derivatives
>     *** The dependency graph image has correct size in PDF output
>     *** 'ldd' now works correctly on x86_64
>     *** Xorg server test suite no longer fails (http://bugs.gnu.org/15392)
>     *** module-init-tools now builds (http://bugs.gnu.org/15182,
> http://bugs.gnu.org/15187)   *** Hop 2.4 builds with newer Bigloo
> (http://bugs.gnu.org/15194)
> 
> 
> Please report bugs to address@hidden
> Join address@hidden for discussions.
> 
> Join the #guix channel of the Freenode IRC network on Sep. 28 and 29
> for a celebration hackathon.
> 
> Happy birthday, GNU!
> 
> Ludovic, on behalf of the Guix team.