- add links to definitions of terms
- one sentence per line
- be more specific about which store is used for the import
- clearly distinguish store paths and store objects
- make a recommendation to use `nix-copy-closure` for efficient SSH transfers
given `nix-copy-closure` exists, it doesn't make much sense to do
nix-store --export $paths | nix-store --import --store ssh://foo@bar
since that dumps everything rather than granularly transferring store
objects as needed.
therefore, pick an example where dumping the entire closure into a file
actually makes a difference, such as when deploying to airgapped systems.
In addition:
- Take the opportunity to add a bunch more missing hyperlinks, too.
- Remove some glossary entries that are now subsumed by dedicated pages.
We used to not be able to do this without breaking link fragments, but
now we can, so pick up where we left off.
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
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.
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>
