writing-documentation.chapter.md

Writing NixOS Documentation {#sec-writing-documentation}

As NixOS grows, so too does the need for a catalogue and explanation of its extensive functionality. Collecting pertinent information from disparate sources and presenting it in an accessible style would be a worthy contribution to the project.

Building the Manual {#sec-writing-docs-building-the-manual}

The sources of the are in the nixos/doc/manual subdirectory of the Nixpkgs repository.

You can quickly validate your edits with devmode:

$ cd /path/to/nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual
$ nix-shell
[nix-shell:~]$ devmode

Once you are done making modifications to the manual, it's important to build it before committing. You can do that as follows:

nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual.x86_64-linux

When this command successfully finishes, it will tell you where the manual got generated. The HTML will be accessible through the result symlink at ./result/share/doc/nixos/index.html.