[Nix-dev] Doc feedback: the very first steps

[Ville Oikarinen]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008, Michael Raskin wrote:

> > (Configuration file rot is another problem,but I don't think even nix
> > addresses that or does it?)
> 
> For trivial configurations you can hope that NixOS maintainers will
> update generate dconfiguration files without changing the system
> configuration.nix option names.

But so far I don't know of any attempt to configure "third party" software
using some abstract, declarative and backwards-compatible language. Well,
never mind, that's another problem.

> > I downloaded the latest stable nix source package, 0.21, and tried to get 
> > going. But things are not quite straightforward:
> 
> Two problems so far: you meant 0.12 and it is very risky to use stable.

Oh, yes, I meant 0.12.

Hmm, I'm aware that this is a work in progress, and the task is very
challenging, but shouldn't a project that tries to stabilize the software
configuration be and _stay_ stable itself? :)

Well, now that I know stable is unstable and HEAD is stable, it's really 
no problem for a while.

> Docs assume SVN version..

Ok, it would be nice to document this, too, maybe in the URL of the
docs... :)

I checked out from svn, and here's what I got:

Again, /usr/local is the default prefix, ./configure --prefix=/nix is 
needed.

A minor: it's ./bootstrap.sh, not ./boostrap. Furthermore, this should be
mentioned before configure;make;make install in the manual, not after it.

The url for the aterm external dependency is broken. Unknown host. I
copied the file from the "stable" release and retried.

I have several docbook stylesheet packages installed in my gentoo system,
but make complained that "cannot stat
/docbook-xsl-missing/images/callouts/*.gif

make install also complained about docbook: failed to load external entity 
"/docbook-xsl-missing/manpages/docbook.xsl"

Is the dependency to docs really necessary? I just want to install the
software, read its docs from the web and keep away from the XML external
reference namespace search path versioning scheme installation jungle :)

Or, if it's possible to get a more detailed step-by-step howto for the
whole installation process (something like gentoo howtos: they manage to
document every relevant step and at the same time explain the more general
principles and give choices), I'm willing to try with docs, too.

Kind regards,
Ville Oikarinen