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.
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Declarative Package Management
With declarative package management, you specify which packages you want
on your system by setting the option
. For instance, adding the
following line to configuration.nix
enables the Mozilla Thunderbird
email application:
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.thunderbird ];
The effect of this specification is that the Thunderbird package from
Nixpkgs will be built or downloaded as part of the system when you run
nixos-rebuild switch
.
::: {.note} Some packages require additional global configuration such as D-Bus or systemd service registration so adding them to might not be sufficient. You are advised to check the list of options whether a NixOS module for the package does not exist. :::
You can get a list of the available packages as follows:
$ nix-env -qaP '*' --description
nixos.firefox firefox-23.0 Mozilla Firefox - the browser, reloaded
...
The first column in the output is the attribute name, such as
nixos.thunderbird
.
Note: the nixos
prefix tells us that we want to get the package from
the nixos
channel and works only in CLI tools. In declarative
configuration use pkgs
prefix (variable).
To "uninstall" a package, simply remove it from
and run nixos-rebuild switch
.
customizing-packages.section.md
adding-custom-packages.section.md