Documentation on "classic" commands with many sub-commands are
notoriously hard to discover due to lack of overview and anchor links.
Additionally the information on common options and environment variables
is not accessible offline in man pages, and therefore often overlooked
by readers.
With this change, each sub-command of nix-store and nix-env gets its
own page in the manual (listed in the table of contents), and each own
man page.
Also, man pages for each subcommand now (again) list common options
and environment variables. While this makes each page quite long and
some common parameters don't apply, this should still make it easier
to navigate as that additional information was not accessible on the
command line at all.
It is now possible to run 'nix-store --<subcommand> --help` to display
help pages for the given subcommand.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
the diagram is a first approximation and only covers that same section.
of course there is much more going on, and other features should at some
point also be illustrated.
we also have to think about presentation format and technicalities
behind it. the manual has to render to `man`, but we may want something
more refined for web view.
The idea and most of the execution are @fricklerhandwerk's. I changed a
few things best I could based on @edolstra's corrections, and a Bazel
glossary.
Valentin Gagarin <valentin@fricklerhandwerk.de>
The current docs are all "how to do things" and no "what is Nix" or "why
are things the way they are".
I see lots of misconception on the wider internet, and I also think we
would benefit from a "living document" to answer some questions people
currently turn to the thesis for.
I think a new section of the manual can address all these issues.
it is out of date, all over the place in level of detail, is really
about `nixpkgs`, and in general instructions should not be part of
a reference manual.
also:
- update redirects and internal links
- use "Nix language" consistently
