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>
This provides a platform-independent way to configure the SSL
certificates file in the Nix daemon. Previously we provided
instructions for overriding the environment variable in launchd, but
that obviously doesn't work with systemd. Now we can just tell users
to add
ssl-cert-file = /etc/ssl/my-certificate-bundle.crt
to their nix.conf.
Add the --base64 and --sri flags for the Base64 and SRI format output.
Add the --base16 flag to explicitly specify the hexadecimal format.
Add the --to-base64 and --to-sri flag to convert a hash to the above
mentioned format.
The motivation is as stated in issue #7814: even though the the C++ API
is internal and unstable, people still want it to be well documented for
sake of learning, code review, and other purposes that aren't predicated
on it being stable.
Fixes#7814
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
the term was hard to discover, as its definition and explanation were in
a very long document lacking an overview section.
search did not help because it occurs so often.
- clarify wording in the definition
- add an overview of installable types
- add "installable" to glossary
- link to definition from occurrences of the term
- be more precise about where store derivation outputs are processed
- installable Nix expressions must evaluate to a derivation
Co-authored-by: Adam Joseph <54836058+amjoseph-nixpkgs@users.noreply.github.com>
The release notes document the change in behavior, I don't include it
here so there is no risk to it getting out of sync.
> Motivation
>> Plumbing CLI should be simple
Store derivation installations are intended as "plumbing": very simple
utilities for advanced users and scripts, and not what regular users
interact with. (Similarly, regular Git users will use branch and tag
names not explicit hashes for most things.)
The plumbing CLI should prize simplicity over convenience; that is its
raison d'etre. If the user provides a path, we should treat it the same
way not caring what sort of path it is.
>> Scripting
This is especially important for the scripting use-case. when arbitrary
paths are sent to e.g. `nix copy` and the script author wants consistent
behavior regardless of what those store paths are. Otherwise the script
author needs to be careful to filter out `.drv` ones, and then run `nix
copy` again with those paths and `--derivation`. That is not good!
>> Surprisingly low impact
Only two lines in the tests need changing, showing that the impact of
this is pretty light.
Many command, like `nix log` will continue to work with just the
derivation passed as before. This because we used to:
- Special case the drv path and replace it with it's outputs (what this
gets rid of).
- Turn those output path *back* into the original drv path.
Now we just skip that entire round trip!
> Context
Issue #7261 lays out a broader vision for getting rid of `--derivation`,
and has this as one of its dependencies. But we can do this with or
without that.
`Installable::toDerivations` is changed to handle the case of a
`DerivedPath::Opaque` ending in `.drv`, which is new: it simply doesn't
need to do any extra work in that case. On this basis, commands like
`nix {show-derivation,log} /nix/store/...-foo.drv` still work as before,
as described above.
When testing older daemons, the post-build-hook will be run against the
old CLI, so we need the old version of the post-build-hook to support
that use-case.
Co-authored-by: Travis A. Everett <travis.a.everett@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
