While this is not actually a notion in the implementation, it is
explicitly described in the thesis and quite important for understanding
how the store works.
Co-authored-by: John Ericson <git@JohnEricson.me>
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
Introduce what substituters "are" in the configuration option entry.
Remove arbitrary line breaks for easier editing in the future.
Link glossary some more.
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: John Ericson <git@JohnEricson.me>
packages and configurations are not really a concept in Nix or the Nix language. the idea of transforming files into other files clearly captures what it's all about, and the new phrasing should make the term "derivation" more obvious both in terms of meaning and origin.
Add support to --list-generations
as another way to say
nix-env --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/$USER/channels --list-generations
the way we did for nix-channel --rollback [generation id]
The primop `builtins.replaceStrings` currently always strictly evaluates the
replacement strings, however time and space are wasted for their computation
if the corresponding pattern do not occur in the input string. This commit
makes the evaluation of the replacement strings lazy by deferring their
evaluation to when the corresponding pattern are matched and memoize the result
for efficient retrieval on subsequent matches.
The testcases for replaceStrings was updated to check for lazy evaluation
of the replacements. A note was also added in the release notes to
document the behavior change.
it's more likely for readers to find it right there.
this also slightly rewords examples to make them stand out better.
in the long run there probably needs to be a dedicated section on formal syntax, and better highlighting of examples.
e.g. nix-env -e subversion => nix-env --uninstall subversion
The aim is to make the documentation less cryptic for newcomers and the
long options are more self-documenting.
The change was made with the following script:
<https://github.com/aschmolck/convert-short-nix-opts-to-long-ones>
and sanity checked visually.
This gives some more context and should clarify why it works that way.
Also link it from the section on `NIX_USER_CONF_FILES`.
Co-authored-by: John Ericson <git@JohnEricson.me>
`/etc/bash.bashrc` is backed up as `/etc/bash.bashrc.backup-before-nix`,
but since other changes might have been introduced in the meantime we can't
just tell the user to revert.
add anchor to `builtins.derivation` and list some built-in functions that are
exposed in the global scope.
I decided not to list everything, because we probably don't want to
encourage people using them that way.
* doc rendering: add functions to scope explicitly
this especially helps beginners with code readability, since the origin
of names is always immediately visible.
it's probably better not to show the manifest file documentation in the
command-specific pages, because these are implementation details that are not really practically useful.
this means no additional hassle for building the manual, but clutters
the table of contents a bit.
placed in a subsection of the binary install, the instructions are hard
to find. putting them in a separate page that is shown in the table of
contents should make it easier for users to find what they need when
they need it.
- Create a glossary entry for experimental features.
- Have the man page experimental feature notice link `nix-commmand`.
(Eventually this should be programmed, based on whether the command is
experimental, and if so what experimental feature does it depend on.)
- Document which installables depend on which experimental features.
I tried to use the same style (bold warning and block quote) that the
top of the man page uses.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
This function returns true or false depending on whether the Nix client
is trusted or not. Mostly relevant when speaking to a remote store with
a daemon.
We include this information in `nix ping store` and `nix doctor`
Co-Authored-By: John Ericson <John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems>
They are put in the manual separate pages under the new overarching
description of experimental features.
The settings page just lists the valid experimental feature names (so
people know what a valid setting entry looks like), with links to those
pages. It doesn't attempt to describe each experimental feature as that
is too much information for the configuration settings section.
Add a page explaining what “experimental features” are, when and how they should be used
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Co-authored-by: Eelco Dolstra <edolstra@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: John Ericson <John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems>
the semantics are not explained in the referenced section any more, they
have been moved to the documentation for common options in the new CLI [0].
[0]: 703d863a48
Instead of constructing a markdown list in C++ (which involved all sorts
of nasty string literals), export some JSON and assemble it with the
manual build system.
Besides following the precedent set with other dumped data, this is a
better separate of content and presentation; if we decide for example we
want to display this information in a different way, or in a different
section of the manual, it will become much easier to do so.
otherwise the order of found `.md` files will influence if `@docroot@`
is replaced before them being included, which may mess up relative
links.
the weirdest thing about it is that the mess-up happens
deterministically on macOS, but deterministically doesn't happen on
Linux!
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>
Jörg Thalheim