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.
there should be a meta section for each chapter to give motivation of
the presented structure. the structure itself is visible from the table
of contents.
idea: sections could be read in different orders by linking them in
different ways (e.g. depth-first or breadth-first). adding hard-coded
transitions makes that confusing.
trying to capture alternative terms in one go here, mirroring everyday
use:
derivation - build plan
realise - execute build
there will be more of that sort.
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it is out of date, all over the place in level of detail, is really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
Before #5150 the copy-to-store phase of the install was idempotent,
but the recursive cp isn't. This is probably baiting a few people
into trying corrective installs that will fail.
Added using the following sed scripts:
- For command-ref/opt-common.md:
s~- `(--?)([^`]+)`~- [`\1\2`]{#opt-\2}~g
- For expressions/builtin-constants.md:
s~- `(builtins\.?)([^`]+)`~- [`\1\2`]{#builtins-\2}~g
- For expressions/advanced-attributes.md
s~^ - `([^`]+)`~ - [`\1`]{#adv-attr-\1}~g
and manually adjusted outputHashAlgo & outputHashMode.
- For glossary.md
s~^ - (`([^`]+)`|(.+)) ?\\~ - [\1]{#gloss-\2\3}\\~g;
s~(gloss-\w+) ~\1-~g
and manually adjusted anchors for Nix expression, user environment, NAR, ∅ and ε.
- For command-ref/env-common.md
s~^ - `([^`]+)`~ - [`\1`]{#env-\1}~g'
Python is only pulled into the build closure by Mercurial, which might end up being removed.
Let’s port the script to jq, which is more likely to stay.
It is now possible to use the following syntax to insert anchors into the text:
[]{#anchor-name}
The anchor will allow linking to the location it is placed by appending #anchor-name to the URL.
Additionally, it is possible to create a link pointing to its own location by adding text between the square brackets:
[`--add-root`]{#opt-add-root}
Add a new `file` fetcher type, which will fetch a plain file over
http(s), or from the local file.
Because plain `http(s)://` or `file://` urls can already correspond to
`tarball` inputs (if the path ends-up with a know archive extension),
the URL parsing logic is a bit convuluted in that:
- {http,https,file}:// urls will be interpreted as either a tarball or a
file input, depending on the extensions of the path part (so
`https://foo.com/bar` will be a `file` input and
`https://foo.com/bar.tar.gz` as a `tarball` input)
- `file+{something}://` urls will be interpreted as `file` urls (with
the `file+` part removed)
- `tarball+{something}://` urls will be interpreted as `tarball` urls (with
the `tarball+` part removed)
Fix#3785
Co-Authored-By: Tony Olagbaiye <me@fron.io>
The produced path is then allowed be imported or utilized elsewhere:
```
assert (43 == import (builtins.toFile "source" "43")); "good"
```
This will still fail on write-only stores.
Requested by ppepino on the Matrix:
https://matrix.to/#/!KqkRjyTEzAGRiZFBYT:nixos.org/$Tb32BS3rVE2BSULAX4sPm0h6CDewX2hClOTGzTC7gwM?via=nixos.org&via=matrix.org&via=nixos.dev
This adds a new command, :bl, which works like :b but also creates
a GC root symlink to the various derivation outputs.
ckie@cookiemonster ~/git/nix -> ./outputs/out/bin/nix repl
Welcome to Nix 2.6.0. Type :? for help.
nix-repl> :l <nixpkgs>
Added 16118 variables.
nix-repl> :b runCommand "hello" {} "echo hi > $out"
This derivation produced the following outputs:
./repl-result-out -> /nix/store/kidqq2acdpi05c4a9mlbg2baikmzik44-hello
[1 built, 0.0 MiB DL]
ckie@cookiemonster ~/git/nix -> cat ./repl-result-out
hi
For each `nix.conf` option, add an empty html node with a unique `id`
that can be used as an anchor target. Also make the name of the option
be a link to that target so that it’s easily discoverable.
We can’t rewrite the whole list as an html definition list like it’s
done for the builtins because these options also appear in a man page,
and the manpage renderer (lowdown) can’t render arbitrary html. But the
hack here allows to keep the manpage and have the links in the html
version.
Fix https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/5745
gives 2-5% performance improvement across a board of tests.
LTO is broken when using clang; some libs link fine while others crash
the linker with a segfault in the llvm linker plugin. 🙁
The uninstall instructions used to accidentally remove the nix-darwin
LaunchDaemon, this was dropped. However, the original intent was to
remove the Store volume mounting LaunchDaemon.
Clarify that `/nix` being present after the uninstall is normal and it
will only disappear after a reboot.
Co-authored-by: Travis A. Everett <travis.a.everett@gmail.com>
The multi-user installation on macOS, which is now the only option, has
gotten complicated enough that it discourages some users from checking
Nix out for fear of being left with a "dirty" system. Detailed
uninstallation instructions should make this less of an issue.
The logical implication operator is included in this section but never explained. It might stump new readers with a pretty uncommon operator, and it's never referenced explicitly.
nixpkgs can save a good bit of eval memory with this primop. zipAttrsWith is
used quite a bit around nixpkgs (eg in the form of recursiveUpdate), but the
most costly application for this primop is in the module system. it improves
the implementation of zipAttrsWith from nixpkgs by not checking an attribute
multiple times if it occurs more than once in the input list, allocates less
values and set elements, and just avoids many a temporary object in general.
nixpkgs has a more generic version of this operation, zipAttrsWithNames, but
this version is only used once so isn't suitable for being the base of a new
primop. if it were to be used more we should add a second primop instead.
This function is very useful in nixpkgs, but its implementation in Nix
itself is rather slow due to it requiring a lot of attribute set and
list appends.
Because the manual is generated from default values which are themselves
generated from various sources (cpuid, bios settings (kvm), number of
cores). This commit hides non-reproducible settings from the manual
output.
This is in line with XDG Base Directory Specification, where ~/.config is supposed to be used when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset.
It also better matches the reality, where ~/.config/nix.conf does not seem to be used.
- Separate the generation of the manpages from their installation
- Make sure that `make` generates the manpages
- Make sure that `make install` installs them
Fix#5051
Use a dedicated make target for the man page rather than bundling the
generation as part of `install`.
Also make sure that `make install` is a fixpoint by
- Removing the generated markdown files from `MANUAL_SRCS`
- Not having the manpage generation write in its source directory so as
to not update its timestamp (it would run each time otherwise)
This looks a lot better (and is also more semantically meaningful).
Since this list is generated in a Nix expression, I don't think using
HTML here is going to be the thing that puts people off modifying this
part of the documentation!
They are equivalent according to
<https://spec.commonmark.org/0.29/#hard-line-breaks>,
and the trailing spaces tend to be a pain (because the make git
complain, editors tend to want to remove them − the `.editorconfig`
actually specifies that − etc..).
This is already used by Hydra, and is very useful when materializing
a remote builder list from service discovery. This allows the service
discovery tool to only sync one file instead of two.
This is technically a breaking change, since attempting to set plugin
files after the first non-flag argument will now throw an error. This
is acceptable given the relative lack of stability in a plugin
interface and the need to tie the knot somewhere once plugins can
actually define new subcommands.
http://nixos.org redirects to https://nixos.org and apparently the HTTP library doesn't follow the redirect, so the output is empty.
When defining https in the request it crashes because the library doesn't seem to support https.
So this switches the example to a different http library.
As we are working towards Nix 3.0 we want to make sure that we make a
huge step forward in Nix's user experience. And once 3.0 is out of the
door we need to make sure that all future commands and features keep up
the standard of user experience.
This PR adds a CLI guideline document to the Nix documentation. Consider
this document a good starting point and a checklist when somebody will
be (re)implementing commands.
Clearly this guideline does nothing to improve user experience on its
own and can only be useful as long as it is going to be read and
cared for. But it is a first step into that direction.
Since c4c3c15c19 (#4251) building Nix for
macOS with sandboxing fails:
```
getting status of /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs: Operation not permitted
```
This happens, because `EvalSettings::getDefaultNixPath` tries to access
paths outside the sandbox. Since the state-dir is not required for
doc generation, it is set to the dummy folder. This needs to be done
for all nix invocations during doc generation, as
`EvalSettings::getDefaultNixPath` is called unconditionally.
Ilya K
mei (ckie)
Linus Heckemann
Alyssa Ross