this converts meta.doc into an md pointer, not an xml pointer. since we
no longer need xml for manual chapters we can also remove support for
manual chapters from md-to-db.sh
since pandoc converts smart quotes to docbook quote elements and our
nixos-render-docs does not we lose this distinction in the rendered
output. that's probably not that bad, our stylesheet didn't make use of
this anyway (and pre-23.05 versions of the chapters didn't use quote
elements either).
also updates the nixpkgs manual to clarify that option docs support all
extensions (although it doesn't support headings at all, so heading
anchors don't work by extension).
most modules can be evaluated for their documentation in a very
restricted environment that doesn't include all of nixpkgs. this
evaluation can then be cached and reused for subsequent builds, merging
only documentation that has changed into the cached set. since nixos
ships with a large number of modules of which only a few are used in any
given config this can save evaluation a huge percentage of nixos
options available in any given config.
in tests of this caching, despite having to copy most of nixos/, saves
about 80% of the time needed to build the system manual, or about two
second on the machine used for testing. build time for a full system
config shrank from 9.4s to 7.4s, while turning documentation off
entirely shortened the build to 7.1s.