[Nix-dev] Nixpkgs 0.7 released

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

I'm pleased to announce the availability of a new stable release of the 
Nix Packages collection.  Release 0.7 can be found at

   http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/nixpkgs-0.7/

Here is a list of the major changes relative to release 0.6:

* The bootstrap process for the standard build environment on Linux
  (stdenv-linux) has been improved.  It is no longer dependent in its
  initial bootstrap stages on the system Glibc, GCC, and other tools.
  Rather, Nixpkgs contains a statically linked bash and curl, and uses
  that to download other statically linked tools.  These are then used
  to build a Glibc and dynamically linked versions of all other
  tools.

  This change also makes the bootstrap process faster.  For instance,
  GCC is built only once instead of three times.

  (Contributed by Armijn Hemel.)

* Tarballs used by Nixpkgs are now obtained from the same server that
  hosts Nixpkgs (catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl).  This reduces the risk of
  packages being unbuildable due to moved or deleted files on various
  servers.

* There now is a generic mechanism for building Perl modules.  See the
  various Perl modules defined in pkgs/system/all-packages-generic.nix.
    
* Notable new packages:

  - Qt 3
  - MySQL
  - MythTV
  - Mono
  - MonoDevelop (alpha)
  - Xine

* Notable updates:

  - GCC 3.4.3
  - Glibc 2.3.4
  - GTK 2.6

-- 
Eelco Dolstra | http://www.cs.uu.nl/~eelco