Habitat 0.11.0 Released

Chef Habitat
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We are very pleased to announce the release of Habitat 0.11.0. This version includes a number of exciting new features, including the first version of a Habitat binary for Windows. (But please read below for the caveats about the Windows support in this release.)

If you just want the new version, head on over to our downloads page. Otherwise, read further for a summary of some of the exciting new features.

Habitat Binary for Windows!

Habitat 0.11.0 is the first version to ship a Habitat binary for Windows (hab.exe). At the moment, it only builds packages suitable for running on Linux. You’ll also need the Docker Engine for Windows…

We are still planning to port the rest of the Habitat system to Windows, including building a native build system and supervisor for Windows applications. As this will be substantial amount of work, we’re planning to tackle .NET web applications first. If you are interested in this initiative, please drop into the #windows channel in the Habi-chat, or drop me an e-mail at jdunn@chef.io so that we can talk further.

In the meantime, we have added a Windows-only tutorial to our documentation site, so if you’re a Windows user fresh to Habitat, you can learn all about Habitat just by using your Windows workstation.

Linux: Hide the need for sudo

In the last version of Habitat, version 0.10.2, we reduced the need for sudo to the operations that really needed it, like hab studio enter. In Habitat 0.11.0, we are further hiding sudo from you; you should run all hab commands now as your own user, and Habitat will prompt you for your sudo password as needed. This should eliminate a great deal of confusion about when sudo is required: just get in the habit of not typing sudo and Habitat will figure it out.

Due to the sudo-simplification changes in both this and the last release, there has been some confusion about migrating keys from old versions that required keys to live in the global key cache. I’ll be following up this release note later with a post in the Habitat Forum about what keys should live where.

Improve Error Handling around Docker

Habitat 0.11.0 will wrap and handle common Docker errors and attempt to display Habitat-specific context, rather than just spitting out Docker’s errors directly.

Improved detection and bundling of pkgconfig files

Habitat 0.11.0 provides better auto-detection for pkgconfig .pc files, and adding them to the package metadata (pkg_pconfig_dirs variable) if they are found within the extracted source tree of the package being built.

Bugs Fixed

The following is a list of the bugs-of-note that have been fixed in this release. For a complete list of fixed bugs, please consult the detailed changelog.