the conversion procedure is simple:
- find all things that look like options, ie calls to either `mkOption`
or `lib.mkOption` that take an attrset. remember the attrset as the
option
- for all options, find a `description` attribute who's value is not a
call to `mdDoc` or `lib.mdDoc`
- textually convert the entire value of the attribute to MD with a few
simple regexes (the set from mdize-module.sh)
- if the change produced a change in the manual output, discard
- if the change kept the manual unchanged, add some text to the
description to make sure we've actually found an option. if the
manual changes this time, keep the converted description
this procedure converts 80% of nixos options to markdown. around 2000
options remain to be inspected, but most of those fail the "does not
change the manual output check": currently the MD conversion process
does not faithfully convert docbook tags like <code> and <package>, so
any option using such tags will not be converted at all.
While looking at the sphinx package I noticed it was heavily
undermaintained, which is when we noticed nand0p has been inactive for
roughly 18 months. It is therefore prudent to assume they will not be
maintaining their packages, modules and tests.
- Their last contribution to nixpkgs was in 2019/12
- On 2021/05/08 I wrote them an email to the address listed in the
maintainer-list, which they didn't reply to.
