"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?
