nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/administration/containers.chapter.md
pennae 1229e735ac nixos-render-docs: add structural includes, use for manual
this adds support for structural includes to nixos-render-docs.
structural includes provide a way to denote the (sub)structure of the
nixos manual in the markdown source files, very similar to how we used
literal docbook blocks before, and are processed by nixos-render-docs
without involvement of xml tooling. this will ultimately allow us to
emit the nixos manual in other formats as well, e.g. html, without going
through docbook at all.

alternatives to this source layout were also considered:

a parallel structure using e.g. toml files that describe the document
tree and links to each part is possible, but much more complicated to
implement than the solution chosen here and makes it harder to follow
which files have what substructure. it also makes it much harder to
include a substructure in the middle of a file.

much the same goes for command-line arguments to the converter, only
that command-lined arguments are even harder to specify correctly and
cannot be reasonably pulled together from many places without involving
another layer of tooling. cli arguments would also mean that the manual
structure would be fixed in default.nix, which is also not ideal.
2023-02-12 13:02:42 +01:00

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Markdown

# Container Management {#ch-containers}
NixOS allows you to easily run other NixOS instances as *containers*.
Containers are a light-weight approach to virtualisation that runs
software in the container at the same speed as in the host system. NixOS
containers share the Nix store of the host, making container creation
very efficient.
::: {.warning}
Currently, NixOS containers are not perfectly isolated from the host
system. This means that a user with root access to the container can do
things that affect the host. So you should not give container root
access to untrusted users.
:::
NixOS containers can be created in two ways: imperatively, using the
command `nixos-container`, and declaratively, by specifying them in your
`configuration.nix`. The declarative approach implies that containers
get upgraded along with your host system when you run `nixos-rebuild`,
which is often not what you want. By contrast, in the imperative
approach, containers are configured and updated independently from the
host system.
```{=include=} sections
imperative-containers.section.md
declarative-containers.section.md
container-networking.section.md
```