1229e735ac
this adds support for structural includes to nixos-render-docs. structural includes provide a way to denote the (sub)structure of the nixos manual in the markdown source files, very similar to how we used literal docbook blocks before, and are processed by nixos-render-docs without involvement of xml tooling. this will ultimately allow us to emit the nixos manual in other formats as well, e.g. html, without going through docbook at all. alternatives to this source layout were also considered: a parallel structure using e.g. toml files that describe the document tree and links to each part is possible, but much more complicated to implement than the solution chosen here and makes it harder to follow which files have what substructure. it also makes it much harder to include a substructure in the middle of a file. much the same goes for command-line arguments to the converter, only that command-lined arguments are even harder to specify correctly and cannot be reasonably pulled together from many places without involving another layer of tooling. cli arguments would also mean that the manual structure would be fixed in default.nix, which is also not ideal.
19 lines
799 B
Markdown
19 lines
799 B
Markdown
# Configuration Syntax {#sec-configuration-syntax}
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The NixOS configuration file `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix` is actually
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a *Nix expression*, which is the Nix package manager's purely functional
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language for describing how to build packages and configurations. This
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means you have all the expressive power of that language at your
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disposal, including the ability to abstract over common patterns, which
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is very useful when managing complex systems. The syntax and semantics
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of the Nix language are fully described in the [Nix
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manual](https://nixos.org/nix/manual/#chap-writing-nix-expressions), but
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here we give a short overview of the most important constructs useful in
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NixOS configuration files.
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```{=include=} sections
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config-file.section.md
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abstractions.section.md
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modularity.section.md
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```
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