guiwf/lix

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Jade Lovelace 748d8310fa Fix the pages in the manual for Lix

This doesn't comprehensively fix everything outdated in the manual, or
make the manual greatly better, but it does note down where at least
jade noticed it was wrong, and it does fix all the instances of
referencing Nix to conform to the style guide to the best of our
ability.

A lot of things have been commented out for being wrong, and there are
three types of FIXME introduced:

- FIXME(Lix): generically Lix needs to fix it
- FIXME(Qyriad): re https://git.lix.systems/lix-project/lix/issues/215
- FIXME(meson): docs got outdated by meson changes and need rewriting

I did fix a bunch of it that I could, but there could certainly be
mistakes and this is definitely just an incremental improvement.

Fixes: https://git.lix.systems/lix-project/lix/issues/266
Change-Id: I5993c4603d7f026a887089fce77db08394362135

2024-05-05 16:11:01 -07:00

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Name

nix.conf - Lix configuration file

Description

Lix supports a variety of configuration settings, which are read from configuration files or taken as command line flags.

Configuration file

By default Lix reads settings from the following places, in that order:

The system-wide configuration file sysconfdir/nix/nix.conf (i.e. /etc/nix/nix.conf on most systems), or $NIX_CONF_DIR/nix.conf if NIX_CONF_DIR is set.

Values loaded in this file are not forwarded to the Nix daemon. The client assumes that the daemon has already loaded them.
If NIX_USER_CONF_FILES is set, then each path separated by : will be loaded in reverse order.

Otherwise it will look for nix/nix.conf files in XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_CONFIG_HOME. If unset, XDG_CONFIG_DIRS defaults to /etc/xdg, and XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaults to $HOME/.config as per XDG Base Directory Specification.
If NIX_CONFIG is set, its contents are treated as the contents of a configuration file.

File format

Configuration files consist of name = value pairs, one per line. Comments start with a # character.

Example:

keep-outputs = true       # Nice for developers
keep-derivations = true   # Idem

Other files can be included with a line like include <path>, where <path> is interpreted relative to the current configuration file. A missing file is an error unless !include is used instead.

A configuration setting usually overrides any previous value. However, for settings that take a list of items, you can prefix the name of the setting by extra- to append to the previous value.

For instance,

substituters = a b
extra-substituters = c d

defines the substituters setting to be a b c d.

Unknown option names are not an error, and are simply ignored with a warning.

Command line flags

Configuration options can be set on the command line, overriding the values set in the configuration file:

Every configuration setting has corresponding command line flag (e.g. --max-jobs 16). Boolean settings do not need an argument, and can be explicitly disabled with the no- prefix (e.g. --keep-failed and --no-keep-failed).

Unknown option names are invalid flags (unless there is already a flag with that name), and are rejected with an error.
The flag --option <name> <value> is interpreted exactly like a <name> = <value> in a setting file.

Unknown option names are ignored with a warning.

The extra- prefix is supported for settings that take a list of items (e.g. --extra-trusted users alice or --option extra-trusted-users alice).

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