[ANN] opam 2.6.0~alpha1

Ecosystem
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Hi everyone,

We are happy to announce the first alpha release of opam 2.6.0. This is the culmination of 2 years of team work requiring large internal changes, we hope you’ll enjoy it.

This version is an alpha, we invite users to test it to spot previously unnoticed bugs as we head towards the stable release.

What’s new? Some highlights:

  • :money_bag: For people using the shell hooks, this release changed the way PATH is kept up-to-date from opam taking priority over any other elements of PATH by making sure to always be in front, to replacing the directory managed by opam in-place, keeping the order asked by the user. To benefit from this, make sure opam init --reinit -ni was ran once after upgrading to this version (automatically done by our install script if it detects an existing opam installation). (#6859, #6815). Thanks to @gridbugs for this contribution.

  • :wastebasket: Reduce the disk space usage of opam by removing the build directory as soon as possible and removing redundant archive caches. While the disk usage used by opam can be reduced over time while simply reinstalling packages, you can liberate some free GB in one go using opam clean --all-switches. (#6440, #4056, #5448)

  • :high_speed_train: Improve performance drastically on certain file-systems (e.g. NTFS on Windows or IO constrained machines) by changing the format HTTP repositories such as opam.ocaml.org are stored in internally. (#6625, #5346, #5741, #5648, #5484, #5559, #3050, #6974).

  • :envelope_with_arrow: Add root and rootexec sections to .install files to install files from the root prefix (#6938, #6919). Thanks to @WardBrian for this contribution.

  • :woman_technologist: Add a new --ignore-available-on argument to allow ignoring the available: field of certain packages (#6836, #5283). Thanks once-again to @WardBrian for this contribution.

  • :ocean: Many more UI additions and improvements, bug fixes, …

:open_book: You can read our blog post for more information about these changes and more, and for even more details you can take a look at the release note or the changelog.

Try it!

The upgrade instructions are unchanged:

For Unix systems

bash -c "sh <(curl -fsSL https://opam.ocaml.org/install.sh) --version 2.6.0~alpha1"

or from PowerShell for Windows systems

Invoke-Expression "& { $(Invoke-RestMethod https://opam.ocaml.org/install.ps1) } -Version 2.6.0~alpha1"

Please report any issues to the bug-tracker.

Happy hacking,
<> <> The opam team <> <> :camel:

Special thanks to the Haematology department and Bone Marrow Transplant Unit of the NHS Greater Glasgow for making this release possible <3

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Thank you for your work!