* docs: unify documentation on search paths
- put all the information on search path semantics into `builtins.findFile`
- put all the information on determining the value of `builtins.nixPath` into the
`nix-path` setting
maybe `builtins.nixPath` is a better place for this, but those bits
can still be moved around now that it's all next to each other.
- link to the syntax page for lookup paths from all places that are
concerned with it
- add or clarify examples
- add a test verifying a claim from documentation
move together all syntactic and semantic information into one
page, and add a page on data types, which in turn links to the syntax and
semantics.
also split out the note on scoping rules into its own page.
Co-authored-by: Ryan Hendrickson <ryan.hendrickson@alum.mit.edu>
this is a pure reformatting, contents were not changed
one sentence per line makes reviewing diffs and making suggestions much
more convenient. the indentation was an artifat of the DocBook
migration.
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.
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
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>
it is out of date, all over the place in level of detail, is really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
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'
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..).
