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diff --git a/doc/introduction.chapter.md b/doc/introduction.chapter.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..8b03221c64b --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/introduction.chapter.md @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +--- +title: Introduction +author: Frederik Rietdijk +date: 2015-11-25 +--- + +# Introduction + +The Nix Packages collection (Nixpkgs) is a set of thousands of packages for the +[Nix package manager](http://nixos.org/nix/), released under a +[permissive MIT/X11 license](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/COPYING). +Packages are available for several platforms, and can be used with the Nix +package manager on most GNU/Linux distributions as well as NixOS. + +This manual primarily describes how to write packages for the Nix Packages collection +(Nixpkgs). Thus it’s mainly for packagers and developers who want to add packages to +Nixpkgs. If you like to learn more about the Nix package manager and the Nix +expression language, then you are kindly referred to the [Nix manual](http://nixos.org/nix/manual/). + +## Overview of Nixpkgs + +Nix expressions describe how to build packages from source and are collected in +the [nixpkgs repository](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs). Also included in the +collection are Nix expressions for +[NixOS modules](http://nixos.org/nixos/manual/index.html#sec-writing-modules). +With these expressions the Nix package manager can build binary packages. + +Packages, including the Nix packages collection, are distributed through +[channels](http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sec-channels). The collection is +distributed for users of Nix on non-NixOS distributions through the channel +`nixpkgs`. Users of NixOS generally use one of the `nixos-*` channels, e.g. +`nixos-16.03`, which includes all packages and modules for the stable NixOS +16.03. The purpose of stable NixOS releases are generally only given +security updates. More up to date packages and modules are available via the +`nixos-unstable` channel. + +Both `nixos-unstable` and `nixpkgs` follow the `master` branch of the Nixpkgs +repository, although both do lag the `master` branch by generally +[a couple of days](http://howoldis.herokuapp.com/). Updates to a channel are +distributed as soon as all tests for that channel pass, e.g. +[this table](http://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixpkgs/trunk/unstable#tabs-constituents) +shows the status of tests for the `nixpkgs` channel. + +The tests are conducted by a cluster called [Hydra](http://nixos.org/hydra/), +which also builds binary packages from the Nix expressions in Nixpkgs for +`x86_64-linux`, `i686-linux` and `x86_64-darwin`. +The binaries are made available via a [binary cache](https://cache.nixos.org). + +The current Nix expressions of the channels are available in the +[`nixpkgs-channels`](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels) repository, +which has branches corresponding to the available channels. |