nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-1609.xml

<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
         xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
         xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
         version="5.0"
         xml:id="sec-release-16.09">
 <title>Release 16.09 (“Flounder”, 2016/09/30)</title>

 <para>
  In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the
  following highlights:
 </para>

 <itemizedlist>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Many NixOS configurations and Nix packages now use significantly less disk
    space, thanks to the
    <link
    xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/7117">extensive
    work on closure size reduction</link>. For example, the closure size of a
    minimal NixOS container went down from ~424 MiB in 16.03 to ~212 MiB in
    16.09, while the closure size of Firefox went from ~651 MiB to ~259 MiB.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    To improve security, packages are now
    <link
    xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/12895">built
    using various hardening features</link>. See the Nixpkgs manual for more
    information.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Support for PXE netboot. See <xref
    linkend="sec-booting-from-pxe" />
    for documentation.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    X.org server 1.18. If you use the <literal>ati_unfree</literal> driver,
    1.17 is still used due to an ABI incompatibility.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    This release is based on Glibc 2.24, GCC 5.4.0 and systemd 231. The default
    Linux kernel remains 4.4.
   </para>
  </listitem>
 </itemizedlist>

 <para>
  The following new services were added since the last release:
 </para>

 <itemizedlist>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>(this will get automatically generated at release time)</literal>
   </para>
  </listitem>
 </itemizedlist>

 <para>
  When upgrading from a previous release, please be aware of the following
  incompatible changes:
 </para>

 <itemizedlist>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    A large number of packages have been converted to use the multiple outputs
    feature of Nix to greatly reduce the amount of required disk space, as
    mentioned above. This may require changes to any custom packages to make
    them build again; see the relevant chapter in the Nixpkgs manual for more
    information. (Additional caveat to packagers: some packaging conventions
    related to multiple-output packages
    <link xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/14766">were
    changed</link> late (August 2016) in the release cycle and differ from the
    initial introduction of multiple outputs.)
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Previous versions of Nixpkgs had support for all versions of the LTS
    Haskell package set. That support has been dropped. The previously provided
    <literal>haskell.packages.lts-x_y</literal> package sets still exist in
    name to aviod breaking user code, but these package sets don't actually
    contain the versions mandated by the corresponding LTS release. Instead,
    our package set it loosely based on the latest available LTS release, i.e.
    LTS 7.x at the time of this writing. New releases of NixOS and Nixpkgs will
    drop those old names entirely.
    <link
    xlink:href="https://nixos.org/nix-dev/2016-June/020585.html">The
    motivation for this change</link> has been discussed at length on the
    <literal>nix-dev</literal> mailing list and in
    <link
    xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/14897">Github
    issue #14897</link>. Development strategies for Haskell hackers who want to
    rely on Nix and NixOS have been described in
    <link
    xlink:href="https://nixos.org/nix-dev/2016-June/020642.html">another
    nix-dev article</link>.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Shell aliases for systemd sub-commands
    <link xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/15598">were
    dropped</link>: <command>start</command>, <command>stop</command>,
    <command>restart</command>, <command>status</command>.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Redis now binds to 127.0.0.1 only instead of listening to all network
    interfaces. This is the default behavior of Redis 3.2
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>/var/empty</literal> is now immutable. Activation script runs
    <command>chattr +i</command> to forbid any modifications inside the folder.
    See <link xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/18365"> the
    pull request</link> for what bugs this caused.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Gitlab's maintainance script <command>gitlab-runner</command> was removed
    and split up into the more clearer <command>gitlab-run</command> and
    <command>gitlab-rake</command> scripts, because
    <command>gitlab-runner</command> is a component of Gitlab CI.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>services.xserver.libinput.accelProfile</literal> default changed
    from <literal>flat</literal> to <literal>adaptive</literal>, as per
    <link xlink:href="https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/group__config.html#gad63796972347f318b180e322e35cee79">
    official documentation</link>.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>fonts.fontconfig.ultimate.rendering</literal> was removed because
    our presets were obsolete for some time. New presets are hardcoded into
    FreeType; you can select a preset via
    <literal>fonts.fontconfig.ultimate.preset</literal>. You can customize
    those presets via ordinary environment variables, using
    <literal>environment.variables</literal>.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    The <literal>audit</literal> service is no longer enabled by default. Use
    <literal>security.audit.enable = true</literal> to explicitly enable it.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>pkgs.linuxPackages.virtualbox</literal> now contains only the
    kernel modules instead of the VirtualBox user space binaries. If you want
    to reference the user space binaries, you have to use the new
    <literal>pkgs.virtualbox</literal> instead.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>goPackages</literal> was replaced with separated Go applications
    in appropriate <literal>nixpkgs</literal> categories. Each Go package uses
    its own dependency set. There's also a new <literal>go2nix</literal> tool
    introduced to generate a Go package definition from its Go source
    automatically.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>services.mongodb.extraConfig</literal> configuration format was
    changed to YAML.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    PHP has been upgraded to 7.0
   </para>
  </listitem>
 </itemizedlist>

 <para>
  Other notable improvements:
 </para>

 <itemizedlist>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Revamped grsecurity/PaX support. There is now only a single general-purpose
    distribution kernel and the configuration interface has been streamlined.
    Desktop users should be able to simply set
<programlisting>security.grsecurity.enable = true</programlisting>
    to get a reasonably secure system without having to sacrifice too much
    functionality.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Special filesystems, like <literal>/proc</literal>, <literal>/run</literal>
    and others, now have the same mount options as recommended by systemd and
    are unified across different places in NixOS. Mount options are updated
    during <command>nixos-rebuild switch</command> if possible. One benefit
    from this is improved security — most such filesystems are now mounted
    with <literal>noexec</literal>, <literal>nodev</literal> and/or
    <literal>nosuid</literal> options.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    The reverse path filter was interfering with DHCPv4 server operation in the
    past. An exception for DHCPv4 and a new option to log packets that were
    dropped due to the reverse path filter was added
    (<literal>networking.firewall.logReversePathDrops</literal>) for easier
    debugging.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Containers configuration within
    <literal>containers.&lt;name&gt;.config</literal> is
    <link
  xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/17365">now
    properly typed and checked</link>. In particular, partial configurations
    are merged correctly.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    The directory container setuid wrapper programs,
    <filename>/var/setuid-wrappers</filename>,
    <link
    xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/18124">is now
    updated atomically to prevent failures if the switch to a new configuration
    is interrupted.</link>
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <literal>services.xserver.startGnuPGAgent</literal> has been removed due to
    GnuPG 2.1.x bump. See
    <link
        xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/5391882ebd781149e213e8817fba6ac3c503740c">
    how to achieve similar behavior</link>. You might need to <literal>pkill
    gpg-agent</literal> after the upgrade to prevent a stale agent being in the
    way.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    <link xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/e561edc322d275c3687fec431935095cfc717147">
    Declarative users could share the uid due to the bug in the script handling
    conflict resolution. </link>
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Gummi boot has been replaced using systemd-boot.
   </para>
  </listitem>
  <listitem>
   <para>
    Hydra package and NixOS module were added for convenience.
   </para>
  </listitem>
 </itemizedlist>
</section>