The "derivation" is one of the key concepts and captures the most distinctive aspect of Nix:
that we work with a certain type data (linked files) in a certain manner (using pure functions).
Here we finally arrange all the important pieces to show how they belong
together, while referring to the respective reference documentation for details.
This change also unbreaks downstream links to `//glossary#gloss-derivation`,
which had been broken by removing the glossary entry
This is supposed to firstly improve the docs as they are, and secondly
hint at how the core conceptual information ought to be moved to the
store derivation section of the manual.
Co-authored-by: Jörg Thalheim <Mic92@users.noreply.github.com>
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>
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.