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2009-05-15 * Some syntactic sugar for attribute sets: allow {x.y.z = ...;} as aEelco Dolstra1-0/+1
shorthand for {x = {y = {z = ...;};};}. This is especially useful for NixOS configuration files, e.g. { services = { sshd = { enable = true; port = 2022; }; }; } can now be written as { services.sshd.enable = true; services.sshd.port = 2022; } However, it is currently not permitted to write { services.sshd = {enable = true;}; services.sshd.port = 2022; } as this is considered a duplicate definition of `services.sshd'.
2008-08-14 * Another experimental feature: a way to truly override attributes inEelco Dolstra1-0/+1
a rec. This will be very useful to allow end-user customisation of all-packages.nix, for instance globally overriding GCC or some other dependency. The // operator doesn't cut it: you could replace the "gcc" attribute, but all other attributes would continue to reference the original value due to the substitution semantics of rec. The syntax is a bit hacky but this is to allow backwards compatibility.
2008-08-14 * Added an experimental feature suggested by Andres: ellipses ("...")Eelco Dolstra1-4/+4
in attribute set pattern matches. This allows defining a function that takes *at least* the listed attributes, while ignoring additional attributes. For instance, {stdenv, fetchurl, fuse, ...}: stdenv.mkDerivation { ... }; defines a function that requires an attribute set that contains the specified attributes but ignores others. The main advantage is that we can then write in all-packages.nix aefs = import ../bla/aefs pkgs; instead of aefs = import ../bla/aefs { inherit stdenv fetchurl fuse; }; This saves a lot of typing (not to mention not having to update all-packages.nix with purely mechanical changes). It saves as much typing as the "args: with args;" style, but has the advantage that the function arguments are properly declared (not implicit in what the body of the "with" uses).
2008-08-14 * @-patterns as in Haskell. For instance, in a function definitionEelco Dolstra1-0/+1
f = args @ {x, y, z}: ...; `args' refers to the argument as a whole, which is further pattern-matched against the attribute set pattern {x, y, z}.
2008-08-14 * Refactoring: combine functions that take an attribute set andEelco Dolstra1-2/+4
functions that take a single argument (plain lambdas) into one AST node (Function) that contains a Pattern node describing the arguments. Current patterns are single lazy arguments (VarPat) and matching against an attribute set (AttrsPat). This refactoring allows other kinds of patterns to be added easily, such as Haskell-style @-patterns, or list pattern matching.
2008-08-11 * Removed the "valid values" feature. Nobody uses it anyway.Eelco Dolstra1-4/+1
2007-11-30 * Added a new kind of multi-line string literal delimited by twoEelco Dolstra1-0/+3
single quotes. Example (from NixOS): job = '' start on network-interfaces start script rm -f /var/run/opengl-driver ${if videoDriver == "nvidia" then "ln -sf ${nvidiaDrivers} /var/run/opengl-driver" else if cfg.driSupport then "ln -sf ${mesa} /var/run/opengl-driver" else "" } rm -f /var/log/slim.log end script ''; This style has two big advantages: - \, ' and " aren't special, only '' and ${. So you get a lot less escaping in shell scripts / configuration files in Nixpkgs/NixOS. The delimiter '' is rare in scripts (and can usually be written as ""). ${ is also fairly rare. Other delimiters such as <<...>>, {{...}} and <|...|> were also considered but this one appears to have the fewest drawbacks (thanks Martin). - Indentation is intelligently stripped so that multi-line strings can follow the nesting structure of the containing Nix expression. E.g. in the example above 6 spaces are stripped from the start of each line. This prevents unnecessary indentation in generated files (which sometimes even breaks things). See tests/lang/eval-okay-ind-string.nix for some examples.
2006-10-17 * Backwards compatibility with old user environment manifests.Eelco Dolstra1-1/+2
2006-10-16 * Big cleanup of the semantics of paths, strings, contexts, stringEelco Dolstra1-2/+30
concatenation and string coercion. This was a big mess (see e.g. NIX-67). Contexts are now folded into strings, so that they don't cause evaluation errors when they're not expected. The semantics of paths has been clarified (see nixexpr-ast.def). toString() and coerceToString() have been merged. Semantic change: paths are now copied to the store when they're in a concatenation (and in most other situations - that's the formalisation of the meaning of a path). So "foo " + ./bla evaluates to "foo /nix/store/hash...-bla", not "foo /path/to/current-dir/bla". This prevents accidental impurities, and is more consistent with the treatment of derivation outputs, e.g., `"foo " + bla' where `bla' is a derivation. (Here `bla' would be replaced by the output path of `bla'.)
2006-10-11 * Removed URIs from the evaluator (NIX-66). They are now just anotherEelco Dolstra1-1/+0
kind of notation for strings.
2006-07-24 * Refactoring to support domain checks.Eelco Dolstra1-2/+7
2006-05-02 * Use a linked list of substitutions. This reduces the amount ofEelco Dolstra1-0/+1
copying.
2006-05-01 * String interpolation. Expressions likeEelco Dolstra1-0/+1
"--with-freetype2-library=" + freetype + "/lib" can now be written as "--with-freetype2-library=${freetype}/lib" An arbitrary expression can be enclosed within ${...}, not just identifiers. * Escaping in string literals: \n, \r, \t interpreted as in C, any other character following \ is interpreted as-is. * Newlines are now allowed in string literals.
2006-05-01 * Allow string concatenations involving derivations, e.g.,Eelco Dolstra1-0/+1
configureFlags = "--with-freetype2-library=" + freetype + "/lib";
2005-07-25 * Added a list concatenation operator:Eelco Dolstra1-0/+1
[1 2 3] ++ [4 5 6] => [1 2 3 4 5 6]
2004-10-29 * Drop ATmake / ATMatcher also in handling store expressions.Eelco Dolstra1-0/+55