Nix/doc/manual/src/store/index.md

# Nix Store

The *Nix store* is an abstraction to store immutable file system data (such as software packages) that can have dependencies on other such data.

There are [multiple types of Nix stores](./types/index.md) with different capabilities, such as the default one on the [local filesystem](./types/local-store.md) (`/nix/store`) or [binary caches](./types/http-binary-cache-store.md).
document the store concept (#9206) * document the store concept and its purpose reword the glossary to link to more existing information instead of repeating it. move the store documentation to the top of the table of contents, in front of the Nix language. this will provide a natural place to document other aspects of the store as well as the various store types. move the package management section after the Nix language and before Advanced Topics to follow the pattern to layer more complex concepts on top of each other. this structure of the manual will also nudge beginners to learn Nix bottom-up and hopefully make more likely that they understand underlying concepts first before delving into complex use cases that may or may not be easy to implement with what's currently there. [John adds this note] The sort of beginner who likes to dive straight into reference documentation should prefer this approach. Conversely, the sort of beginner who would prefer the opposite top-down approach of trying to solve problems before they understand everything that is going on is better off reading other tutorial/guide material anyways, and will just "random-access" the reference manual as a last resort. For such random-access the order doesn't matter, so this restructure doesn't make them any worse off. Co-authored-by: John Ericson <git@JohnEricson.me> 2023-10-25 04:28:35 +02:00			`# Nix Store`

document store objects in terms of their constituent parts this also rephrases the introductory sentence to be more general, in order to avoid the same word being repeated in short succession. 2023-10-25 04:50:43 +02:00			`The Nix store is an abstraction to store immutable file system data (such as software packages) that can have dependencies on other such data.`

Document each store type on its own page This makes for more useful manual table of contents, that displays the information at a glance. The `nix help-stores` command is kept as-is, even though it will show up in the manual with the same information as these pages due to the way it is written as a "`--help`-style" command. Deciding what to do with that command is left for a later PR. This change also lists all store types at the top of the respective overview page. Co-authored-by: John Ericson <John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems 2023-11-30 23:07:09 +01:00			There are [multiple types of Nix stores](./types/index.md) with different capabilities, such as the default one on the [local filesystem](./types/local-store.md) (`/nix/store`) or [binary caches](./types/http-binary-cache-store.md).