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Document file system object content addressing

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>
This commit is contained in:
John Ericson 2024-04-09 17:07:39 -04:00
parent 87ab3c0ea4
commit 043135a848
33 changed files with 228 additions and 68 deletions

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# Glossary
- [content address]{#gloss-content-address}
A
[*content address*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable_storage)
is a secure way to reference immutable data.
The reference is calculated directly from the content of the data being referenced, which means the reference is
[*tamper proof*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamperproofing)
--- variations of the data should always calculate to distinct content addresses.
For how Nix uses content addresses, see:
- [Content-Addressing File System Objects](@docroot@/store/file-system-object/content-address.md)
- [content-addressed store object](#gloss-content-addressed-store-object)
- [content-addressed derivation](#gloss-content-addressed-derivation)
Software Heritage's writing on [*Intrinsic and Extrinsic identifiers*](https://www.softwareheritage.org/2020/07/09/intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-identifiers) is also a good introduction to the value of content-addressing over other referencing schemes.
Besides content addressing, the Nix store also uses [input addressing](#gloss-input-addressed-store-object).
- [derivation]{#gloss-derivation}
A description of a build task. The result of a derivation is a
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See [installables](./command-ref/new-cli/nix.md#installables) for [`nix` commands](./command-ref/new-cli/nix.md) (experimental) for details.
- [NAR]{#gloss-nar}
- [Nix Archive (NAR)]{#gloss-nar}
A *N*ix *AR*chive. This is a serialisation of a path in the Nix
store. It can contain regular files, directories and symbolic
links. NARs are generated and unpacked using `nix-store --dump`
and `nix-store --restore`.
See [Nix Archive](store/file-system-object/content-address.html#serial-nix-archive) for details.
- [`∅`]{#gloss-emtpy-set}
The empty set symbol. In the context of profile history, this denotes a package is not present in a particular version of the profile.