There is more Nix nature in one line of Nix language than in ten thousand lines of C++

https://www.catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/ten-thousand.html

In reply to @fricklerhandwerk:matrix.org

There is a wealth of information here: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/C

Mostly written by @Mic92 in past years AFAIK. Would be great to have that closer to the code, because all of that is Nixpkgs material.

We still haven't really figured out how to organise troubleshooting tips and other guide-like material across the ecosystem though. The last state of affairs was that we converged on the idea that it should be a bit like what Johannes Kirschbauer @hsjobeki proposes for function documentation, but for guides: have a uniform format used across Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS, and present that in one place, annotated with tags and searchable. But that is a lot of "should", and will require thinking about the structure of the manuals, and moving around lots of text.

In reply to @fricklerhandwerk:matrix.org

Those were recently improved:

• https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/280592
• https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/277534

But there's definitely still work to do. Ideally we'd also render that stuff directly from the source. At least there is no duplication any more. I can imagine danielsidhion could help with reviews.

In reply to @rina/:matrix.org
there is documentation in the source, so maybe it's an issue of making them render in the manual? not sure

In reply to @rina/:matrix.org
there is documentation in the source, so maybe it's an issue of making them render in the manual? not sure

In reply to @rina/:matrix.org
there is documentation in the source, so maybe it's an issue of making them render in the manual? not sure

In reply to @infinisil:matrix.org
I'd also favor having it in the source code, but not having duplicated docs is more important than that

In reply to @infinisil:matrix.org
I'd also favor having it in the source code, but not having duplicated docs is more important than that

I'd like moving those back into the source code until we have a working system that allows to track external documents, so we dont loose track of the reference documentation.

More importantly we should work on reference tracking for those that are moved already. Maybe i'll open a PR soonish.

I'd like moving those back into the source code until we have a working system that allows to track external documents, so we dont loose track of the reference documentation.

More importantly we should work on reference tracking for those that are moved already. Maybe i'll open a PR with a proposed solution soonish.

infinisil: Roughly tracking the following relations:

1. Code <-> Documentation
2. Documenation <-> Documentation
3. Documentation -> external references. e.g. references from nixpkgs to nix manual

For each of those we should have some kind of solution.

fricklerhandwerk Brought TagRef to me, which i really like because of its simplicity. (Can solve 2.)

For 1. we have the RFC145 but may need additional extensions for something like: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/b286b8df1c0ecff4baa44a7224282aeccc6695c2/pkgs/build-support/trivial-builders/default.nix#L29

Then for 3. I imagine that every of our manuals could export sitemaps (https://www.sitemaps.org/de/protocol.html) Which could be used in conjunction with TagRef.

But regarding this topic i was mainly refering to refences of 1. because moving doc-comments out of the source without replacement leaves the code side of those references untracked. (We don't relly properly track them yet) But its a nice property we kind of "destroyed" here. (At least for automated tooling)

infinisil: Roughly tracking the following relations:

1. Code <-> Documentation
2. Documenation <-> Documentation
3. Documentation -> external references. e.g. references from nixpkgs to nix manual

For each of those we should have some kind of solution.

fricklerhandwerk Brought TagRef to me, which i really like because of its simplicity. (Can solve 2. / maybe 3.)

For 1. we have the RFC145 but may need additional extensions for something like: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/b286b8df1c0ecff4baa44a7224282aeccc6695c2/pkgs/build-support/trivial-builders/default.nix#L29

Then for 3. I imagine that every of our manuals could export sitemaps (https://www.sitemaps.org/de/protocol.html) Which could be used in conjunction with TagRef.

But regarding this topic i was mainly refering to refences of 1. because moving doc-comments out of the source without replacement leaves the code side of those references untracked. (We don't relly properly track them yet) But its a nice property we kind of "destroyed" here. (At least for automated tooling)

infinisil: Roughly tracking the following relations:

1. Code <-> Documentation
2. Documenation <-> Documentation
3. Documentation -> external references. e.g. references from nixpkgs to nix manual

For each of those we should have some kind of solution.

fricklerhandwerk Brought TagRef to me, which i really like because of its simplicity. (Can solve 2. / maybe 3.)

For 1. we have the RFC145 but may need additional extensions for something like: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/b286b8df1c0ecff4baa44a7224282aeccc6695c2/pkgs/build-support/trivial-builders/default.nix#L29
You want to automatically link from the documentation to the exact source code position (file/line/column) if there is such a reference. And we are doing this for, e.g., lib already.

Then for 3. I imagine that every of our manuals could export sitemaps (https://www.sitemaps.org/de/protocol.html) Which could be used in conjunction with TagRef.

But regarding this topic i was mainly refering to refences of 1. because moving doc-comments out of the source without replacement leaves the code side of those references untracked. (We don't relly properly track them yet) But its a nice property we kind of "destroyed" here. (At least for automated tooling)

infinisil: Roughly tracking the following relations:

1. Code <-> Documentation
2. Documenation <-> Documentation
3. Documentation -> external references. e.g. references from nixpkgs to nix manual

For each of those we should have some kind of solution.

fricklerhandwerk Brought TagRef to me, which i really like because of its simplicity. (Can solve 2. / maybe 3.)

For 1. we have the RFC145 but may need additional extensions for something like: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/b286b8df1c0ecff4baa44a7224282aeccc6695c2/pkgs/build-support/trivial-builders/default.nix#L29
You want to automatically link from the documentation to the exact source code position (file/line/column) if there is such a reference. And we are doing this for, e.g., lib already.

Then for 3. I imagine that every of our manuals could export sitemaps (https://www.sitemaps.org/de/protocol.html) Which could be used in conjunction with TagRef.

But regarding this topic i was mainly refering to references of 1. because moving doc-comments out of the source without replacement leaves the code side of those references untracked. (We don't relly properly track them yet) But its a nice property we kind of "destroyed" here. (At least for automated tooling)

infinisil: Roughly tracking the following relations:

1. Code <-> Documentation
2. Documenation <-> Documentation
3. Documentation -> external references. e.g. references from nixpkgs to nix manual

For each of those we should have some kind of solution.

fricklerhandwerk Brought TagRef to me, which i really like because of its simplicity. (Can solve 2. / maybe 3.)

For 1. we have the RFC145 but may need additional extensions for something like: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/b286b8df1c0ecff4baa44a7224282aeccc6695c2/pkgs/build-support/trivial-builders/default.nix#L29
You want to automatically link from the documentation to the exact source code position (file/line/column) if there is such a reference. And we are doing this for, e.g., lib already.

Then for 3. I imagine that every of our manuals could export sitemaps (https://www.sitemaps.org/de/protocol.html) Which could be used in conjunction with TagRef.

But regarding this topic i was mainly refering to references of 1. because moving doc-comments out of the source without replacement leaves the code-side of those references untracked. (We don't relly properly track them yet) But its a nice property we kind of "destroyed" here. (At least for automated tooling)