nixpkgs/doc/contributing.xml

<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
         xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
         xml:id="chap-contributing">

<title>Contributing to this documentation</title>

<para>The DocBook sources of the Nixpkgs manual are in the <filename
xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/doc">doc</filename>
subdirectory of the Nixpkgs repository.</para>

<para>You can quickly check your edits with <command>make</command>:</para>

<screen>
  $ cd /path/to/nixpkgs/doc
  $ nix-shell
  [nix-shell]$ make
</screen>

<para>If you experience problems, run <command>make debug</command>
to help understand the docbook errors.</para>

<para>After making modifications to the manual, it's important to
build it before committing. You can do that as follows:

<screen>
  $ cd /path/to/nixpkgs/doc
  $ nix-shell
  [nix-shell]$ make clean
  [nix-shell]$ nix-build .
</screen>

If the build succeeds, the manual will be in
<filename>./result/share/doc/nixpkgs/manual.html</filename>.</para>

</chapter>