home-manager/docs/release-notes/rl-2003.adoc

[[sec-release-20.03]]
== Release 20.03

The 20.03 release branch became the stable branch in April, 2020.

[[sec-release-20.03-highlights]]
=== Highlights

This release has the following notable changes:

* Assigning a list to the <<opt-home.file>>, <<opt-xdg.configFile>>,
and <<opt-xdg.dataFile>> options is now deprecated and will produce a
warning message if used. Specifically, if your configuration currently
contains something like
+
[source,nix]
----
home.file = [
  {
    target = ".config/foo.txt";
    text = "bar";
  }
]
----
+
then it should be updated to instead use the equivalent attribute set form
+
[source,nix]
----
home.file = {
  ".config/foo.txt".text = "bar";
}
----
+
Support for the list form will be removed in Home Manager version
20.09.

* The `lib` function attribute given to modules is now enriched with
an attribute `hm` containing extra library functions specific for Home
Manager. More specifically, `lib.hm` is now the same as `config.lib`
and should be the preferred choice since it is more robust.
+
Therefore, if your configuration makes use of, for example,
`config.lib.dag` to create activation script blocks, it is recommended
to change to `lib.hm.dag`.
+
Note, in the unlikely case that you are
+
** using Home Manager's NixOS or nix-darwin module,
** have made your own Home Manager module containing an top-level
   option named `config` or `options`, and
** assign to this option in your system configuration inside a plain
   attribute set, i.e., without a function argument,

+
then you must update your configuration to perform the option
assignment inside a `config` attribute. For example, instead of
+
[source,nix]
----
home-manager.users.jane = { config = "foo"; };
----
+
use
+
[source,nix]
----
home-manager.users.jane = { config.config = "foo"; };
----

* The `services.compton` module has been deprecated and instead the
new module `services.picom` should be used. This is because Nixpkgs no
longer packages compton, and instead packages the (mostly) compatible
fork called picom.

* The list form of the <<opt-programs.ssh.matchBlocks>> option has
been deprecated and configurations requiring match blocks in a defined
order should switch to using DAG entries instead. For example, a
configuration
+
[source,nix]
----
programs.ssh.matchBlocks = [
  {
    host = "alpha.foo.com";
    user = "jd";
  }
  {
    host = "*.foo.com";
    user = "john.doe";
  }
];
----
+
can be expressed along the lines of
+
[source,nix]
----
programs.ssh.matchBlocks = {
  "*.example.com" = {
    user = "john.doe";
  }
  "alpha.example.com" = lib.hm.dag.entryBefore ["*.example.com"] {
    user = "jd";
  }
};
----
+
Support for the list form will be removed in Home Manager version
20.09.

[[sec-release-20.03-state-version-changes]]
=== State Version Changes

The state version in this release includes the changes below. These
changes are only active if the `home.stateVersion` option is set to
"20.03" or later.

* The <<opt-programs.zsh.history.path>> option is no longer prepended
  by `$HOME`, which allows specifying absolute paths, for example,
  using the xdg module. Also, the default value is fixed to
  `$HOME/.zsh_history` and `dotDir` path is not prepended to it
  anymore.
* The newsboat module will now default in displaying `queries` before `urls` in
  its main window. This makes sense in the case when one has a lot of URLs and
  few queries.