nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/from_md/contributing-to-this-manual.chapter.xml
LoveIsGrief 83b917a960
nixos/manpages: Explain -I option and how to build manpages
When running nixos-rebuild -I, the man page just said "-I path" which could be interpreted as
 "just a path to nixpkgs", which in fact it actually has the same meaning as NIX_PATH.

This is now made clear in the manual, so that when grepping "-I" and "NIX_PATH" one quickly finds
 the format of the option.

I don't know how to link to the "nix manual" as stated in the docbook, so I left that as it is.

Additionally, it wasn't clear to me how to actually build the man pages and view the changes I made.
That's now in the contributing-to-this-manual.chapter.md.
2022-12-11 11:00:06 +01:00

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<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xml:id="chap-contributing">
<title>Contributing to this manual</title>
<para>
The
<link xlink:href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">DocBook</link>
and CommonMark sources of the NixOS manual are in the
<link xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/nixos/doc/manual">nixos/doc/manual</link>
subdirectory of the
<link xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs">Nixpkgs</link>
repository.
</para>
<para>
You can quickly check your edits with the following:
</para>
<programlisting>
$ cd /path/to/nixpkgs
$ ./nixos/doc/manual/md-to-db.sh
$ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual.x86_64-linux
</programlisting>
<para>
If the build succeeds, the manual will be in
<literal>./result/share/doc/nixos/index.html</literal>.
</para>
<para>
<emphasis role="strong">Contributing to the man pages</emphasis>
</para>
<para>
The man pages are written in
<link xlink:href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">DocBook</link>
which is XML.
</para>
<para>
To see what your edits look like:
</para>
<programlisting>
$ cd /path/to/nixpkgs
$ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manpages.x86_64-linux
</programlisting>
<para>
You can then read the man page you edited by running
</para>
<programlisting>
$ man --manpath=result/share/man nixos-rebuild # Replace nixos-rebuild with the command whose manual you edited
</programlisting>
<para>
If youre on a different architecture thats supported by NixOS
(check nixos/release.nix) then replace
<literal>x86_64-linux</literal> with the architecture.
<literal>nix-build</literal> will complain otherwise, but should
also tell you which architecture you have + the supported ones.
</para>
</chapter>