The first Nix paper.

The paper “Efficient Upgrading in a Purely Functional Component Deployment Model” has been accepted at CBSE 2005. It describes how we can deploy updates to Nix packages efficiently, even if “fundamental” packages like Glibc are updated (which cause a rebuild of all dependent packages), by deploying binary patches between components in the Nix store. Includes techniques such as patch chaining and computing deltas between archive files.

The paper “Service Configuration Management” (accepted at the 12th International Workshop on Software Configuration Management) describes how we can rather easily deploy “services” (e.g., complete webserver configurations such as our Subversion server) through Nix by treating the non-component parts (such as configuration files, control scripts and static data) as components that are built by Nix expressions. The result is that all advantages that Nix offers to software deployment also extend to service deployment, such as the ability to easily have multiple configuration side by side, to roll back configurations, and to identify the precise dependencies of a configuration.

The paper “Secure Sharing Between Untrusted Users in a Transparent Source/Binary Deployment Model” has been accepted at ASE 2005. This paper describes how a Nix store can be securely shared by multiple users who may not trust each other; i.e., how do we prevent one user from installing a Trojan horse that is subsequently executed by some other user?

Nix 0.9 has been released. This is a new major release that provides quite a few performance improvements and bug fixes, as well as a number of new features. Read the release notes for details.

Nix 0.9.2 has been released released. This is a bug fix release that addresses some problems on Mac OS X.

Eelco Dolstra defended his PhD thesis on the purely functional deployment model.

Nixpkgs 0.9 has been released.

Nix 0.10 has been released. This release has many improvements and bug fixes; see the release notes for details.

Nix 0.10.1 has been released. It fixes two obscure bugs that shouldn’t affect most users.

Nixpkgs 0.10 has been released. See the release notes for details.

To quote Eelco Visser: new hardware for buildfarm at Delft University of Technology has arrived.

Here’s what we have: 5 Intel Core 2 Duo DualCore machines with 1GB RAM, 2 Mac minis with 1,83-GHz Intel Core Duo-processor, another Core 2 Duo a UPS to deal with spikes in power supply, a console with integrated monitor and keyboard switches, a rack with room for a couple more machines.

Here’s what we’re going to do with the goodies. The five Intel machines and the two MacMinis (also Intel) are going to be used to crank at building hundreds of software packages. Using virtualisation we should be able to run builds on multiple operating system distributions. Read more…