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nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/contributing-to-this-manual.chapter.md
LoveIsGrief 83b917a960
nixos/manpages: Explain -I option and how to build manpages 
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.
2022-12-11 11:00:06 +01:00

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Contributing to this manual

The DocBook and CommonMark sources of the NixOS manual are in the nixos/doc/manual subdirectory of the Nixpkgs repository.

You can quickly check your edits with the following:

$ cd /path/to/nixpkgs
$ ./nixos/doc/manual/md-to-db.sh
$ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual.x86_64-linux

If the build succeeds, the manual will be in ./result/share/doc/nixos/index.html.

Contributing to the man pages

The man pages are written in DocBook which is XML.

To see what your edits look like:

$ cd /path/to/nixpkgs
$ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manpages.x86_64-linux

You can then read the man page you edited by running

$ man --manpath=result/share/man nixos-rebuild # Replace nixos-rebuild with the command whose manual you edited

If you're on a different architecture that's supported by NixOS (check nixos/release.nix) then replace x86_64-linux with the architecture. nix-build will complain otherwise, but should also tell you which architecture you have + the supported ones.