manual: add "declarative package management" section #25955
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This section gives some details on how to setup an "environment" without having to go through NixOS (although it could be used there too). I’ve tried to make it straightforward and have a kind of "tutorial" feel. Not sure if that’s appropriate for the manual, so any recommended changes would be helpful.
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Might there be a wiki migration issue this fixes? |
| mkdir -p $out/etc/profile.d | ||
| cp ${myProfile} $out/etc/profile.d/my-profile.sh | ||
| '') | ||
| aspell |
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I think it might be better to stick to 2 or 3 packages for the examples.
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Just for record, I personally prefer using simple attrmaps instead of |
Do you have an example of your setup? My understanding was you could never get man pages/info pages setup correctly without |
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Correct; I do consider #24717 a bug. It's still possible to map over the custom set and amend |
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| <para> | ||
| <literal>pathsToLink</literal> tells Nixpkgs to only link the paths listed | ||
| which gets rid of the extra stuff in the profile. |
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not linking the extra stuff (like <insert concrete non-matching file path>) in the profile. (feel free to modify slightly if what I am saying is not correct, the point I want to make is that it's vague)
| <literal>pathsToLink</literal> tells Nixpkgs to only link the paths listed | ||
| which gets rid of the extra stuff in the profile. | ||
| <filename>/bin</filename> and <filename>/share</filename> are good | ||
| defaults for a user environment, getting rid of the clutter. If you are |
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defaults for a clutter free user environment is shorter.
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| <para> | ||
| After building that new environment, look through | ||
| <filename>~/.nix-profile</filename> to make sure everything is there that |
| <para> | ||
| After building that new environment, look through | ||
| <filename>~/.nix-profile</filename> to make sure everything is there that | ||
| we wanted. Discerning readers will note that some files are missing. Look |
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A fairly long paragraph to make a simple point. Spending words to tell the user is super smart, might be attractive to the latent narcissists , but I count them as waste.
| </screen> | ||
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| <para> | ||
| This provides us with some useful documentation for using our packages. |
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This line doesn't add anything.
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| <para> | ||
| This provides us with some useful documentation for using our packages. | ||
| However, if we actually want those manpages to be detected by man, we need |
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To make man detect our written manpages...
| <para> | ||
| This provides us with some useful documentation for using our packages. | ||
| However, if we actually want those manpages to be detected by man, we need | ||
| to set up our environment. This can also be managed within Nix |
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Overloading the word environment makes it harder to read.
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| <screen> | ||
| #!/bin/sh | ||
| if [ -d $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d ]; then |
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Not quoting $HOME makes baby Jezus cry. It's better to replace it with ~.
| <screen> | ||
| #!/bin/sh | ||
| if [ -d $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d ]; then | ||
| for i in $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/*.sh; do |
| #!/bin/sh | ||
| if [ -d $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d ]; then | ||
| for i in $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/*.sh; do | ||
| if [ -r $i ]; then |
| if [ -d $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d ]; then | ||
| for i in $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/*.sh; do | ||
| if [ -r $i ]; then | ||
| . $i |
| </screen> | ||
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| <para> | ||
| Now just run <literal>source $HOME/.profile</literal> and you can starting |
| <title>GNU info setup</title> | ||
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| <para> | ||
| Configuring GNU info is a little bit trickier than man pages. To work |
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Qualifications about difficulty are a waste of words.
To let GNU Info display our <info pages/documentation/whatever> it needs this information indexed in a database, which is done as followed:
| extraOutputsToInstall = [ "man" "doc" "info" ]; | ||
| postBuild = '' | ||
| if [ -x $out/bin/install-info -a -w $out/share/info ]; then | ||
| shopt -s nullglob |
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This is documentation, not a course in how to program shell, so please rewrite the code such that it doesn't need this.
| if [ -x $out/bin/install-info -a -w $out/share/info ]; then | ||
| shopt -s nullglob | ||
| for i in $out/share/info/*.info $out/share/info/*.info.gz; do | ||
| $out/bin/install-info $i $out/share/info/dir |
| </screen> | ||
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| <para> | ||
| <literal>postBuild</literal> tells Nixpkgs to run a command after building |
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Nixpkgs doesn't really run anything. Please rewrite to be correct.
| <para> | ||
| <literal>postBuild</literal> tells Nixpkgs to run a command after building | ||
| the environment. In this case, <literal>install-info</literal> adds the | ||
| installed info pages to <literal>dir</literal> which is GNU info's default |
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| the environment. In this case, <literal>install-info</literal> adds the | ||
| installed info pages to <literal>dir</literal> which is GNU info's default | ||
| root node. Note that <literal>texinfoInteractive</literal> is added to the | ||
| environment to give the <literal>install-info</literal> command. |
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to give is unspecific language.
| we wanted. Discerning readers will note that some files are missing. Look | ||
| inside <filename>~/.nix-profile/share/man/man1/</filename> to verify this. | ||
| There are no man pages for any of the Nix tools! This is because some | ||
| packages like Nix have multiple outputs for things like documentation (see |
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DocBook is a hyperlinked format, so just link to the section.
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| <section xml:id="sec-building-environment"> | ||
| <title>Build an environment</title> | ||
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Please define what is understood by an environment.
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Merging, this is better than what is there. Thank you. |
matthewbauer
deleted the
nixpkgs-manual-declarative-package-management
branch
This section gives some details on how to setup an "environment"
without having to go through NixOS (although it could be used there
too). I’ve tried to make it straightforward and have a kind of
"tutorial" feel. Not sure if that’s appropriate for the manual, so any
recommended changes would be helpful.
Also the section might not be totally appropriate, but this is a fairly general use case, I think.