Highlights of what’s new in 0.6.25

The 0.6.25 release primarily consists of changes to support new features that are not yet complete, including fixes and updates to DFX commands, Motoko, the Motoko base library, and Candid.

New features and capabilities

The most significant new features and capabilities include the following updates:

This release introduces environment variables for specifying canister identifiers.

You can now use the CANISTER_ID_{canister.name} and CANISTER_CANDID_PATH_{canister.name} environment variables to reference canister identifiers and the path to the canister Candid description (.did file) during the build process. These environment variables enable you to construct the JavaScript for front-end assets using the correct canister identifiers.

The environment variables are intended to replace the import syntax for dependent canisters described in Entry and output configuration which is being deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
A new dfx identity import subcommand enables you to import a security certificate to create an identity.

For example, if you use a hardware wallet or a key generation utility to generate a PEM file for authenticating your identity, you can now import that PEM file into dfx to create a new identity. After importing the PEM file, you can run the dfx identity use command to set that identity as your default context.

For example, to import the my-external-id.pem and create an identity named alice, you would run the following command:
```
dfx identity import alice my-external-id.pem
```
After running this command, you would run the following command to begin using the new identity:
```
dfx identity use alice
```

Issues fixed in this release

This section covers any reported issues that have been fixed in this release.

Known issues and limitations

This section covers any known issues or limitations that might affect how you work with the DFINITY Canister SDK in specific environments or scenarios.