Commit graph

16 commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Matthew Bauer 32ddbe3da9 doc: typo fixes 2018-11-19 13:02:17 -06:00
Robert Hensing 3c2ae189c2 doc: Improve overrides and overlays documentation 2018-10-18 14:01:06 +02:00
Robert Hensing 9b7654f6ff nixpkgs docs: Point to pkgs.extend, pkgs.appendOverlays and improve override section 2018-10-18 10:48:43 +02:00
Graham Christensen 77161de454
nixpkgs docs: format =) 2018-05-01 19:54:21 -04:00
Michael Peyton Jones 9235ff1259 Overlays: allow overlays to be specified in a file 2017-08-17 22:13:39 +00:00
Michael Peyton Jones 5bc183ebf8 Overlays: fix some documentation nits 2017-08-13 14:48:41 +00:00
Michael Peyton Jones d60b288663 Nixpkgs manual: expand documentation for overlays 2017-08-13 14:48:41 +00:00
Jan Tojnar e35f3c0679
doc: Fix some typos 2017-06-11 22:13:42 +02:00
Carles Pagès cc779bc421 doc: fix overlays paths
It was not updated with 9d6a55aefd.
2017-04-02 10:11:01 +02:00
Eelco Dolstra 7dacca324d
$NIXPKGS_OVERLAYS -> <nixpkgs-overlays>
The Nix search path is the established mechanism for specifying the
location of Nix expressions, so let's use it instead of adding another
environment variable.
2017-02-01 16:07:54 +01:00
Nicolas B. Pierron 88ba960a6d Fix nixpkgs manual generation, missing para closing tag. 2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00
Nicolas B. Pierron 2ad710e70e Fix extra nits from aneeshusa 2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00
Nicolas B. Pierron 2d6532b330 Update overlay documentation by following nits from aneeshusa. 2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00
Nicolas B. Pierron 51d3c931e1 Replace 'phases' by 'layers' in overlays documentation. 2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00
Nicolas B. Pierron f9da1fa957 Throw an error if NIXPKGS_OVERLAYS is invalid and improve documentation. 2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00
Nicolas B. Pierron f5dfe78a1e Add overlays mechanism to Nixpkgs.
This patch add a new argument to Nixpkgs default expression named "overlays".

By default, the value of the argument is either taken from the environment variable `NIXPKGS_OVERLAYS`,
or from the directory `~/.nixpkgs/overlays/`.  If the environment variable does not name a valid directory
then this mechanism would fallback on the home directory.  If the home directory does not exists it will
fallback on an empty list of overlays.

The overlays directory should contain the list of extra Nixpkgs stages which would be used to extend the
content of Nixpkgs, with additional set of packages.  The overlays, i-e directory, files, symbolic links
are used in alphabetical order.

The simplest overlay which extends Nixpkgs with nothing looks like:

```nix
self: super: {
}
```

More refined overlays can use `super` as the basis for building new packages, and `self` as a way to query
the final result of the fix-point.

An example of overlay which extends Nixpkgs with a small set of packages can be found at:
  https://github.com/nbp/nixpkgs-mozilla/blob/nixpkgs-overlay/moz-overlay.nix

To use this file, checkout the repository and add a symbolic link to
the `moz-overlay.nix` file in `~/.nixpkgs/overlays` directory.
2017-01-16 01:17:33 +01:00