"content-address*ed*" derivation is misleading because all derivations
are *themselves* content-addressed. What may or may not be
content-addressed is not derivation itself, but the *output* of the
derivation.
The outputs are not *part* of the derivation (for then the derivation
wouldn't be complete before we built it) but rather separate entities
produced by the derivation.
"content-adddress*ed*" is not correctly because it can only describe
what the derivation *is*, and that is not what we are trying to do.
"content-address*ing*" is correct because it describes what the
derivation *does* --- it produces content-addressed data.
This is a big step documenting the store layer on its own, separately from the evaluator (and `builtins.derivation`).
Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
nix-env can read priorities from a derivations meta attributes, but this
only works when installing a nix expression.
nix-env can also install bare store paths, however meta attributes are
not readable in that case. This means that a store path can not be
installed with a specific priority.
Some cases where it is advantageous to install a store path: a remote
host following a `nix copy`, or any time you want to save some
evaluation time and happen to already know the store path.
This PR addresses this shortcoming by adding a --priority flag to
nix-env --install.
The current instructions for building the Nix manual include a command that doesn't work as described. Specifically:
```
nix build .#nix^doc
```
Running this command results in the error:
```
error: derivation '/nix/store/hddqxzfqgx2fhj8q66ss3idym7pk7aj1-nix-2.26.0pre20250107_383ab87.drv' does not have wanted outputs 'doc'
```
However, this command works if you specify the Nix version explicitly, such as:
```
nix build nix/2.24.11#nix^doc
```
Additionally, these commands are run within the Nix root directory.
However, the nix build .#nix^doc command does work when run from the nixpkgs directory and generates the NixOS manual.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something. Is the `nix^doc` supposed to be added somehow to flake outputs?
The incremental build section does not work since as make has been decommissioned in favor of Meson. Should this be simply deleted?
The experimental `nix eval` command already supports a `--raw` flag.
This commit implements the same flag for the stable nix-instantiate command.
Until now instructions and scripts that didn't want to rely on experimental
features had to use workarounds such as:
nix-instantiate --eval <something> | tr -d \"
(which also undesirably also removes double quotation marks within the string), or
nix-instantiate --eval <something> | jq -j
(which undesirably depends on another package).
Co-authored-by: Silvan Mosberger <silvan.mosberger@tweag.io>
* doc: Clarify that nix-shell still uses shell from host environment
* doc: Fix NIX_BUILD_SHELL description
* doc: Add anchor and link to NIX_BUILD_SHELL
* doc: Add example of default shell trickiness
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin@gagarin.work>
operators are an everyday thing in the Nix language, and this page will
hopefully be consulted by many users.
string contexts are quite exotic, and not linking to the detailed
explanation will require readers to figure out manually what this is
about, or worse, skim over and run into problems later.
* doc/manual: Add 'Debugging Nix' section
This commit adds a new 'Debugging Nix' section to the Nix manual. It provides instructions on how to build Nix with debug symbols and how to debug the Nix binary using debuggers like `lldb`.
Co-authored-by: Jörg Thalheim <Mic92@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
