nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual
Nicolas B. Pierron f5dfe78a1e Add overlays mechanism to Nixpkgs.
This patch add a new argument to Nixpkgs default expression named "overlays".

By default, the value of the argument is either taken from the environment variable `NIXPKGS_OVERLAYS`,
or from the directory `~/.nixpkgs/overlays/`.  If the environment variable does not name a valid directory
then this mechanism would fallback on the home directory.  If the home directory does not exists it will
fallback on an empty list of overlays.

The overlays directory should contain the list of extra Nixpkgs stages which would be used to extend the
content of Nixpkgs, with additional set of packages.  The overlays, i-e directory, files, symbolic links
are used in alphabetical order.

The simplest overlay which extends Nixpkgs with nothing looks like:

```nix
self: super: {
}
```

More refined overlays can use `super` as the basis for building new packages, and `self` as a way to query
the final result of the fix-point.

An example of overlay which extends Nixpkgs with a small set of packages can be found at:
  https://github.com/nbp/nixpkgs-mozilla/blob/nixpkgs-overlay/moz-overlay.nix

To use this file, checkout the repository and add a symbolic link to
the `moz-overlay.nix` file in `~/.nixpkgs/overlays` directory.
2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00
..
administration NixOS Manual: Container Networking with NM 2016-11-20 17:25:33 +01:00
configuration doc: remove last mention of <nixos> 2016-12-11 19:51:35 +01:00
development manual: reviewing contributions nixos -> nixpkgs (#20626) 2016-11-22 15:15:02 +01:00
installation nixos: docs: note that channels are per user 2016-12-07 09:06:25 +01:00
release-notes Add overlays mechanism to Nixpkgs. 2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00
default.nix NixOS: Use runCommand instead of mkDerivation in a few places 2016-09-29 13:05:28 +02:00
man-configuration.xml Manual: Explicitly mark commands that require to be run as root (#15589) 2016-06-01 15:23:32 +01:00
man-nixos-build-vms.xml Manual: Explicitly mark commands that require to be run as root (#15589) 2016-06-01 15:23:32 +01:00
man-nixos-generate-config.xml nixos-generate-config: Emit LUKS configuration for boot device 2016-05-25 18:04:41 +02:00
man-nixos-install.xml nixos-install: add options --closure, --no-channel-copy, --no-root-passwd, and --no-bootloader 2016-08-04 16:22:25 +01:00
man-nixos-option.xml Manual: Explicitly mark commands that require to be run as root (#15589) 2016-06-01 15:23:32 +01:00
man-nixos-rebuild.xml doc: correct typo (#21176) 2016-12-15 17:13:44 +01:00
man-nixos-version.xml Add some more info to the nixos-version manpage 2016-07-15 12:02:39 +02:00
man-pages.xml doc: add man page for nixos-version (#16869) 2016-07-12 16:29:13 +02:00
manual.xml fix manual 2016-06-01 21:55:31 +01:00
options-to-docbook.xsl fix https://github.com/NixOS/nixops/issues/331 2016-06-03 15:55:17 +01:00
README nixos/doc/manual: Fix typos in README. 2014-07-23 15:00:25 +02:00
style.css Manual: Chunk into separate pages 2014-08-25 19:08:31 +02:00

To build the manual, you need Nix installed on your system (no need
for NixOS). To install Nix, follow the instructions at

    https://nixos.org/nix/download.html

When you have Nix on your system, in the root directory of the project
(i.e., `nixpkgs`), run:

    nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual.x86_64-linux

When this command successfully finishes, it will tell you where the
manual got generated.