When running nixos-rebuild -I, the man page just said "-I path" which could be interpreted as "just a path to nixpkgs", which in fact it actually has the same meaning as NIX_PATH. This is now made clear in the manual, so that when grepping "-I" and "NIX_PATH" one quickly finds the format of the option. I don't know how to link to the "nix manual" as stated in the docbook, so I left that as it is. Additionally, it wasn't clear to me how to actually build the man pages and view the changes I made. That's now in the contributing-to-this-manual.chapter.md.
36 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
# Contributing to this manual {#chap-contributing}
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The [DocBook] and CommonMark sources of the NixOS manual are in the [nixos/doc/manual](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/nixos/doc/manual) subdirectory of the [Nixpkgs](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs) repository.
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You can quickly check your edits with the following:
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```ShellSession
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$ cd /path/to/nixpkgs
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$ ./nixos/doc/manual/md-to-db.sh
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$ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual.x86_64-linux
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```
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If the build succeeds, the manual will be in `./result/share/doc/nixos/index.html`.
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**Contributing to the man pages**
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The man pages are written in [DocBook] which is XML.
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To see what your edits look like:
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```ShellSession
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$ cd /path/to/nixpkgs
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$ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manpages.x86_64-linux
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```
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You can then read the man page you edited by running
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```ShellSession
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$ man --manpath=result/share/man nixos-rebuild # Replace nixos-rebuild with the command whose manual you edited
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```
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If you're on a different architecture that's supported by NixOS (check nixos/release.nix) then replace `x86_64-linux` with the architecture.
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`nix-build` will complain otherwise, but should also tell you which architecture you have + the supported ones.
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[DocBook]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook
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