release notes: 2.26.0

Author: edolstra

doc/manual/rl-next/ignore-local-registries.md

@@ -130,6 +130,7 @@
   - [Contributing](development/contributing.md)
 - [Releases](release-notes/index.md)
 {{#include ./SUMMARY-rl-next.md}}
+  - [Release 2.26 (2025-01-22)](release-notes/rl-2.26.md)
   - [Release 2.25 (2024-11-07)](release-notes/rl-2.25.md)
   - [Release 2.24 (2024-07-31)](release-notes/rl-2.24.md)
   - [Release 2.23 (2024-06-03)](release-notes/rl-2.23.md)

doc/manual/rl-next/nix-copy-flags.md

@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+# Release 2.26.0 (2025-01-22)
+
+- Support for relative path inputs [#10089](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/10089)
+
+  Flakes can now refer to other flakes in the same repository using relative paths, e.g.
+  ```nix
+  inputs.foo.url = "path:./foo";
+  ```
+  uses the flake in the `foo` subdirectory of the referring flake. For more information, see the documentation on [the `path` flake input type](@docroot@/command-ref/new-cli/nix3-flake.md#path-fetcher).
+
+  This feature required a change to the lock file format. Previous Nix versions will not be able to use lock files that have locks for relative path inputs in them.
+
+- Flake lock file generation now ignores local registries [#12019](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/12019)
+
+  When resolving indirect flake references like `nixpkgs` in `flake.nix` files, Nix will no longer use the system and user flake registries. It will only use the global flake registry and overrides given on the command line via `--override-flake`.
+
+  This avoids accidents where users have local registry overrides that map `nixpkgs` to a `path:` flake in the local file system, which then end up in committed lock files pushed to other users.
+
+  In the future, we may remove the use of the registry during lock file generation altogether. It's better to explicitly specify the URL of a flake input. For example, instead of
+  ```nix
+  {
+    outputs = { self, nixpkgs }: { ... };
+  }
+  ```
+  write
+  ```nix
+  {
+    inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-24.11";
+    outputs = { self, nixpkgs }: { ... };
+  }
+  ```
+
+- `nix copy` supports `--profile` and `--out-link` [#11657](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/11657)
+
+  The `nix copy` command now has flags `--profile` and `--out-link`, similar to `nix build`. `--profile` makes a profile point to the
+  top-level store path, while `--out-link` create symlinks to the top-level store paths.
+
+  For example, when updating the local NixOS system profile from a NixOS system closure on a remote machine, instead of
+  ```
+  # nix copy --from ssh://server $path
+  # nix build --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system $path
+  ```
+  you can now do
+  ```
+  # nix copy --from ssh://server --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system $path
+  ```
+  The advantage is that this avoids a time window where *path* is not a garbage collector root, and so could be deleted by a concurrent `nix store gc` process.
+
+- `nix-instantiate --eval` now supports `--raw` [#12119](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/12119)
+
+  The `nix-instantiate --eval` command now supports a `--raw` flag, when used
+  the evaluation result must be a string, which is printed verbatim without
+  quotation marks or escaping.
+
+- Improved `NIX_SSHOPTS` parsing for better SSH option handling [#5181](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/5181) [#12020](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/12020)
+
+  The parsing of the `NIX_SSHOPTS` environment variable has been improved to handle spaces and quotes correctly.
+  Previously, incorrectly split SSH options could cause failures in commands like `nix-copy-closure`,
+  especially when using complex SSH invocations such as `-o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p ..."`.
+
+  This change introduces a `shellSplitString` function to ensure
+  that `NIX_SSHOPTS` is parsed in a manner consistent with shell
+  behavior, addressing common parsing errors.
+
+  For example, the following now works as expected:
+
+  ```bash
+  export NIX_SSHOPTS='-o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p ..."'
+  ```
+
+  This update improves the reliability of SSH-related operations using `NIX_SSHOPTS` across Nix CLIs.
+
+# Contributors
+
+Querying GitHub API for f0c209fb14cb511370ea2b7787d9a8dd90070162, to get handle for [email protected]