Nixpkgs manual out of date

The Nixpkgs manual (Nixpkgs 23.11 manual | Nix & NixOS) is out of date relative to its source (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/bba261c785a0aa49dedf6143b4b2e43b5690103f/doc/languages-frameworks/python.section.md). I was tipped off by the fact that the docs on the website still refer to python35, even though that’s more or less obsolete now.

What’s more I can’t figure out what commit the docs at Nixpkgs 23.11 manual | Nix & NixOS are at? Is generating the docs not hooked up to CI? Also it would be really awesome to have some kind of “Edit on GitHub” link in the docs to encourage first time contributors :slight_smile:

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It’s still available, just not built by hydra. Not to mention the timeline for this interpreter is EOL by the end of the year.

Seeing as it says Version 20.03post-git , most likely the nixpkgs-20.03 branch.

It is, probably connected to the nix channels

If only docbook was that easy :slight_smile:

For most documentation (e.g. the Nix and NixOS manuals) I understand that the stable versions are linked.

However the nixpkgs manual (outside the first few sections, which are pretty stable anyway) is probably mostly used by people who contribute to nixpkgs and are thus writing for unstable. So, I wonder if it doesn’t make more sense to use this manual from the unstable channel.

I have been bitten by this several times when I started looking at nixpkgs and couldn’t find something in the manual (or what it said there was outdated).

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Whenever I’m looking at Python or Rust documentation and referring users to sections, I always link directly to the source right on GitHub, since it’s reasonably readable as-is, and always clear about what version you’re looking at (20.03 stable vs. master):

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/b87c7ec3b47941f26cfca9047a8f68f848b6b413/doc/languages-frameworks/python.section.md

I’m really, really looking forward to RFC #72, which will let us do this everywhere :slight_smile:

I’d also like to throw it out there that you can have your cake and eat it too: lots of docs sites allow you to see exactly the version you’re reading and also flip through the different versions. So it’d be pretty easy to have all the docs show all their versions like “20.03”, “latest”, etc.

Indeed, we do have that. The latest manuals are all built by Hydra here:

https://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixpkgs/trunk/manual

You can click into it to get a rendering of the most recent doc build:

https://hydra.nixos.org/build/124998632/download/1/nixpkgs/manual.html

You can also check the other channels for versions of 20.03 manuals, 19.09 manuals, etc.

A nice thing about markdown files in git, though, is that everybody knows in an instant how to do these things, without having to go hunt for them (assuming they even know that these Hydra products exist in the first place).

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you can also build it locally:

[16:22:43] jon@jon-desktop /home/jon/projects/nixpkgs (master)
$ nix-build pkgs/top-level/release.nix -A manual
....
/nix/store/nzmii1xa01sgjpmc8h0awk91hlzdw7mc-nixpkgs-manual
$ xdg-open ./result/share/doc/nixpkgs/manual.html
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