infinisil: re this: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/270696#discussion_r1412898648

this is emblematic of a larger set of problems we have:

• CONTRIBUTING.md is a guide level explanation of things, and is already too bloody long. It is the wrong place to provide reference level material about our vision for docs.
• Relatedly, we need to write these vision documents down.
• We don't have a https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/ for Nix, and we need one desperately. We should make one and start moving things to it. (n.b. I spot https://nix.dev/contributing/documentation/ now but this should be one website for all Nix things with all the vision for all the pieces on it together, both code and docs, imo)
• We don't have a repo to file meta issues like I am talking about here, and we need one. Another issue that should be filed in there is "hydra notifications for failed maintained packages", for example.
• All the places that docs go have different stylesheets and don't link to each other, both as deep links and even shallow links. This gives the impression that they're not part of a coherent ecosystem with one responsible set of people.
• Our current docs splitting work is partially counterproductive due to this lack of links; but would be strongly positively improved by adding links.

I might post these things to discourse to try to get some of the things to make a "nix development guide" mdbook site happen. On a broad level, a remarkable amount of contributor frustration is caused by this communication gap. The lack of meta issue tracker is also very painful since it would be useful to ask for help for these things, but they're not written down in a coherent place to actually do them.

In reply to @jade_:matrix.org

infinisil: re this: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/270696#discussion_r1412898648

this is emblematic of a larger set of problems we have:

• CONTRIBUTING.md is a guide level explanation of things, and is already too bloody long. It is the wrong place to provide reference level material about our vision for docs.
• Relatedly, we need to write these vision documents down.
• We don't have a https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/ for Nix, and we need one desperately. We should make one and start moving things to it. (n.b. I spot https://nix.dev/contributing/documentation/ now but this should be one website for all Nix things with all the vision for all the pieces on it together, both code and docs, imo)
• We don't have a repo to file meta issues like I am talking about here, and we need one. Another issue that should be filed in there is "hydra notifications for failed maintained packages", for example.
• All the places that docs go have different stylesheets and don't link to each other, both as deep links and even shallow links. This gives the impression that they're not part of a coherent ecosystem with one responsible set of people.
• Our current docs splitting work is partially counterproductive due to this lack of links; but would be strongly positively improved by adding links.

I might post these things to discourse to try to get some of the things to make a "nix development guide" mdbook site happen. On a broad level, a remarkable amount of contributor frustration is caused by this communication gap. The lack of meta issue tracker is also very painful since it would be useful to ask for help for these things, but they're not written down in a coherent place to actually do them.

jade_:

CONTRIBUTING.md is a guide level explanation of things, and is already too bloody long. It is the wrong place to provide reference level material about our vision for docs.