- Video conference
- GitHub project board
- Team details
- Past meeting notes
- Attendees: @infinisil @fricklerhandwerk @pennae @j-k @proofconstruction
- Notes by: @proofconstruction
Agenda
Discussion
Today we began by reviewing a draft PR about the Learning Journey Working Group’s recommendations for new tutorial contributions:
-
@proofconstruction: Is there a guideline for tutorial author’s voice?
- @fricklerhandwerk: Yes, there’s a guideline linked on this page.
-
@infinisil: Some comments on the PR. Need more info on the
learning-journeybranch of nix.dev.- What’s the process for merging the learning-journey branch back into master?
- What’s the purpose of having a separate branch?
- @fricklerhandwerk: [action item] need to move the Writing Style section of the contributing guidelines out into another page.
We then moved on to @olaf’s long-standing PR about expanding documentation on NixOS configuration testing:
- @j-k: This testing feature isn’t specific to the nix package manager, it’s dependent on the VM stuff under-the-hood in nixpkgs.
-
@fricklerhandwerk:
nixosTestin the subheading isn’t code-highlighted - @j-k: nixpkgs in the scaffolding test nix file should be pinned to 22.11 (optionally at a specific commit), like this
- @infinisil: add config and overlays to the nixpkgs import
- @j-k links the relevant reference section for NixOS Test Options.
- @fricklerhandwerk: omit the pinning explanation, we already pin in the top-level example.
-
@fricklerhandwerk: let’s check the description of the mapping between
machinein the python script andnode.namein the node.nixosConfiguration; need to fix up the description in the NixOS manual -
@infinisil: generally you’d use
nix-build --check -
@pennae: we should never advocate
nix-store --delete - @infinisil: Need to add a separate tutorial talking about how to force Nix to rebuild derivations.
- @j-k: Link out to a tutorial on rebuilding, then in that tutorial we can discuss how to rebuild derivations that may be nondeterministic.
-
@fricklerhandwerk: [action item] The section on spot checking build determinism should not exist here, and instead should be in the section about the
--checkoption fornix-store --realise. Move it appropriately. Detailed documentation should be in the nix manual. When moving this, we need to also add a redirect from the old location to the new location in the--checkflag. @j-k will take this. -
@j-k:
nix-buildhas flags that don’t show up in the table of contents: nix-store --realise - Nix Reference Manual-
@fricklerhandwerk:
nix-builddoes not have anything underneath it /in the table of contents/ because it doesn’t have subcommands, butnix-storedoes, and passes some of these through.
-
@fricklerhandwerk:
-
@fricklerhandwerk: [action item] link
nix-buildoptions in the Nix manual tonix-store --realisesection. Everything in the spot-checking build determinism should appear in here also. -
@j-k how come we use
@docroot@in some places and not others?- @fricklerhandwerk: Probably should use docroot for everything.
-
@infinisil: Add more links to
nix-builddocumentation - @fricklerhandwerk: Need to add a new guide on re-running non-deterministic NixOS tests.
Finally, we wrapped up the call with a brief meta-level consideration of the structure of these documentation meetings:
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@fricklerhandwerk: Changing the way we do docs team meetings; Monday meetings will now be for knowledge-sharing and mob-style PR review if it works for everyone
- @proofconstruction: We can each take PRs and take notes ahead of time, bring them to the Monday meeting and share, so this process goes faster/we get more work done in each hour we can work together.
), but I recall the discussion being about acceptable/inescapable indeterminacy using the system-wide nixpkgs and config.