| 14 Mar 2024 |
 @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | That being said, I won't die on that hill. I did not spend a lot of time contributing to the manual lately, I don't want to be a blocker for people actually trying to improve the thing. Worst case scenario, we still can generate a single-page documentation and move it to a custom domain unoficially. | 12:48:33 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | * I personally dislike the multi-page approach. The current manuals structure is chaotic and require ctrl-f ing your way through it. Splitting it to multiple pages breaks this use case. | 12:48:59 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | * I personally dislike the multi-page approach. The current manuals structure is chaotic and require ctrl-f ing your way through it. Splitting it to multiple pages breaks this use case and makes information less easily available. | 12:50:30 |
 @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | In reply to @picnoir:alternativebit.fr
I personally dislike the multi-page approach. The current manuals structure is chaotic and require ctrl-f ing your way through it. Splitting it to multiple pages breaks this use case and makes information less easily available. Ofc we must offer a search functionality. Otherwise nobody finds anything. ctrl-f wont work anymore ^^ | 12:57:55 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | Our let me present you the current search mechanism: "ctrl-f"
I wonder why google doesnt have his index as a single html file that way you could just ctrl-f and dont have to enter it into the server.
Ah okay maybe thats a bit sarcastic now 😂 | 13:01:18 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | * "Let me present you the current search mechanism: "ctrl-f"
I wonder why google doesnt have his index as a single html file that way you could just ctrl-f and dont have to enter it into the server."
Ah okay maybe thats a bit sarcastic now 😂 | 13:01:32 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr left the room. | 13:10:36 |
 toonn | I hope the search will be better than the one for the Nix manual. It always returns tons of irrelevant results and you have to hope what you're looking for is buried somewhere in the results. | 13:10:37 |
 @adam:robins.wtf | As a counter argument I find searching the one large page difficult and confusing. Because there is so much content, and very poor delineation between sections, I frequently am confused where in the manual the jump has taken me. That’s of course when I’m not on mobile because the all in one page is practically useless for reading the documentation on mobile, and crashes my mobile browser tab. If we had to choose one path, I’d vote for multiple pages plus search. Though maybe we can have both? | 13:56:18 |
 fricklerhandwerk | I'd also say that a condition to split anything into multiple pages is that
- There will still be a single-page rendering as an alternative
- All anchors are redirected at the client
We can't do better than partially relying on client-side redirects, but it works okay for the Nix manual. In fact, I'm not even sure why it even works, but an anchor like in https://nixos.org/manual/nix#chap-tuning-cores-and-jobs will correctly propagate from the server-side redirect to https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/ to the client-side redirect script.
Changing where the manuals are hosted should therefore not be an issue if done carefully.
| 14:07:43 |
| fricklerhandwerk | In reply to @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host
In my opinion, the root of our current issues stems from the overuse of anchor tags. This overreliance has led to regressions and breakages that we're now struggling to address. The longer we delay taking action, the more severe and complex these problems become, exacerbating the situation further. It's not critical as long as we don't change existing anchors and don't move files around without putting redirects in place. Just an annoyance which will keep adding friction. But it can be systematically addressed with the required care. It's one of these "someone just has to do it" cases :) | 14:14:51 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | Yes we could build a client side redirect. This would solve the migration issue. But this means the client side redirect handler has to be installed into the potentially new root page of manual/nixpkgs/stable/ | 14:20:06 |
| fricklerhandwerk | In reply to @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host
Yes we could build a client side redirect. This would solve the migration issue. But this means the client side redirect handler has to be installed into the potentially new root page of manual/nixpkgs/stable/ Absolutely | 14:27:41 |
 danielsidhion | I think providing single-page + multi-page solutions isn't conflicting and satisfies more people and use cases, so it's definitely something that any multi-page solution should investigate at the very least | 14:58:21 |
| danielsidhion | Is the jitsi server for the meeting working? | 15:02:19 |
| danielsidhion | (it is!) | 15:03:11 |
|  NixOS Moderation Botchanged room power levels. | 18:45:33 |
| 15 Mar 2024 |
|  dustsucker joined the room. | 09:29:53 |
 Eli Flanagan | I'd like to improve the documentation for buildNpmPackage. To me, this is the story of how do you package node.js applications or libraries in nix. I'm running into a number of pitfalls and would like to have the languages section note these.
Before I go submitting changes, are there maintainers I should check in with? Or a particular guide to follow? | 14:30:10 |
| danielsidhion | In reply to @efx:matrix.org
I'd like to improve the documentation for buildNpmPackage. To me, this is the story of how do you package node.js applications or libraries in nix. I'm running into a number of pitfalls and would like to have the languages section note these.
Before I go submitting changes, are there maintainers I should check in with? Or a particular guide to follow? Hey, thanks for being willing to improve the docs! There are codeowners for the javascript docs here, so I think they'll automatically get added to the PR once you make it: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/.github/CODEOWNERS#L338
We have some docs conventions here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/doc/README.md#documentation-conventions
Not all the content is following those conventions yet, they are somewhat recent because we didn't have any written conventions until some months ago. I'm doing the work of making the nixpkgs manual more consistent with that.
I'd appreciate if you could try to follow those conventions as best as you can when making changes. I'll review your PR as well (just make sure it starts with "doc:" and I'll pick it up on my queue) | 15:50:49 |
| danielsidhion | (also read that whole README doc I linked, it's very helpful) | 15:51:50 |
| Eli Flanagan | most certainly. I love words so enjoy it! Thank you for the detailed info danielsidhion. I'll note to follow those conventions. | 16:13:53 |
| Eli Flanagan | I just created a GitHub account and seem to be unable to fork NixOS/nixpkgs. I'll work on the patch separately and may need some assistance getting the bytes into NixOS/nixpkgs. | 17:29:33 |
| Eli Flanagan | I'll try git-send-mail patch approach per https://discourse.nixos.org/t/about-the-patches-category/477. | 17:31:37 |
| danielsidhion | In reply to @efx:matrix.org
I just created a GitHub account and seem to be unable to fork NixOS/nixpkgs. I'll work on the patch separately and may need some assistance getting the bytes into NixOS/nixpkgs. What URL are you using to try to fork? What error are you getting? | 17:53:05 |
| Eli Flanagan | Using GItHub web UI from Linux. Tried Firefox and Brave. GitHub's web UI displays correctly but simply redirects to NixOS/nixpkgs | 17:53:51 |
| Eli Flanagan | i'm going to try to manually import a recent clone of nixpkgs and push to my profile | 17:54:12 |
| Eli Flanagan | It looks like I can start an "import" https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs into my private profile as a new repository.
Though I'm curious if some kind of locking behavior is at play upstream. | 17:57:07 |
| danielsidhion | Oh sorry I misinterpreted what you said. Can you try forking with the github cli? gh repo fork NixOS/nixpkgs | 17:58:39 |
| Eli Flanagan | huh, looks like something is up: failed to fork: HTTP 403: You cannot fork this repository at this time (https://api.github.com/repos/NixOS/nixpkgs/forks) | 18:06:16 |
