about summary refs log tree commit diff
path: root/doc
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'doc')
-rw-r--r--doc/manual/introduction.xml40
-rw-r--r--doc/manual/package-management.xml57
-rw-r--r--doc/manual/quick-start.xml4
3 files changed, 50 insertions, 51 deletions
diff --git a/doc/manual/introduction.xml b/doc/manual/introduction.xml
index a50db8d39c8f..35f18dee2ce9 100644
--- a/doc/manual/introduction.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/introduction.xml
@@ -12,11 +12,11 @@ features are:
 
 <itemizedlist>
 
-<listitem><para>It makes sure that dependency specifications are
-complete.  In general in a deployment system you have to specify for
-each component what its dependencies are, but there are no guarantees
-that this specification is complete.  If you forget a dependency, then
-the component will build and work correctly on
+<listitem><para>It helps you make sure that dependency specifications
+are complete.  In general in a deployment system you have to specify
+for each component what its dependencies are, but there are no
+guarantees that this specification is complete.  If you forget a
+dependency, then the component will build and work correctly on
 <emphasis>your</emphasis> machine if you have the dependency
 installed, but not on the end user's machine if it's not
 there.</para></listitem>
@@ -25,8 +25,8 @@ there.</para></listitem>
 variants</emphasis> of a component installed at the same time.  In
 contrast, in systems such as RPM different versions of the same
 package tend to install to the same location in the file system, so
-you installing one version will remove the other.  This is especially
-important if you want to have use applications that have conflicting
+installing one version will remove the other.  This is especially
+important if you want to use applications that have conflicting
 requirements on different versions of a component (e.g., application A
 requires version 1.0 of library X, while application B requires a
 non-backwards compatible version 1.1).</para></listitem>
@@ -45,24 +45,23 @@ component to fail).</para></listitem>
 
 <listitem><para>Likewise, it is possible to atomically roll back after
 an install, upgrade, or uninstall action.  That is, in a fast (O(1))
-operation the previous configuration of the system will be restored.
-This is because upgrade or uninstall actions doesn't actually remove
+operation the previous configuration of the system can be restored.
+This is because upgrade or uninstall actions don't actually remove
 components from the system.</para></listitem>
 
 <listitem><para>Unused components can be
-<emphasis>garbage-collected</emphasis> automatically and safely.
-I.e., when you remove an application from a profile, its dependencies
-will be deleted by the garbage collector if there are no other active
-applications that are using it.</para></listitem>
+<emphasis>garbage-collected</emphasis> automatically and safely: when
+you remove an application from a profile, its dependencies will be
+deleted by the garbage collector only if there are no other active
+applications using them.</para></listitem>
 
 <listitem><para>Nix supports both source-based deployment models
 (where you distribute <emphasis>Nix expressions</emphasis> that tell
 Nix how to build software from source) and binary-based deployment
 models.  The latter is more-or-less transparent: installation of
-components is always based on Nix expressions, but if those
-expressions have been built before and Nix knows that the resulting
-binaries are available somewhere, it will use those
-instead.</para></listitem>
+components is always based on Nix expressions, but if the expressions
+have been built before and Nix knows that the resulting binaries are
+available somewhere, it will use those instead.</para></listitem>
 
 <listitem><para>Nix is flexible in the deployment policies that it
 supports.  There is a clear separation between the tools that
@@ -80,13 +79,12 @@ This means that if a component was built succesfully once, it can be
 rebuilt again on another machine and the result will be the same.  We
 cannot <emphasis>guarantee</emphasis> this (e.g., if the build depends
 on the time-of-day), but Nix (and the tools in the Nix Packages
-collection) takes special measures to help achieve
-this.</para></listitem>
+collection) takes special care to help achieve this.</para></listitem>
 
 <listitem><para>Nix expressions (the things that tell Nix how to build
 components) are self-contained: they describe not just components but
 complete compositions.  In other words, Nix expressions also describe
-how to build all the dependencies.  This is contrast to component
+how to build all the dependencies.  This is in contrast to component
 specification languages like RPM spec files, which might say that a
 component X depends on some other component Y, but since it does not
 describe <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> what Y is, the result of
@@ -111,7 +109,7 @@ platforms.</para></listitem>
 also for <emphasis>service deployment</emphasis>, such as the
 deployment of a complete web server with all its configuration files,
 static pages, software dependencies, and so on.  Nix's advantages for
-software deployment also apply here, for instance, the ability
+software deployment also apply here: for instance, the ability
 trivially to have multiple configurations at the same time, or the
 ability to do rollbacks.</para></listitem>
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/package-management.xml b/doc/manual/package-management.xml
index d299bf054e62..4e86b26010d3 100644
--- a/doc/manual/package-management.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/package-management.xml
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ Nix expressions called the Nix Package collection that contains
 components ranging from basic development stuff such as GCC and Glibc,
 to end-user applications like Mozilla Firefox.  (Nix is however not
 tied to the Nix Package collection; you could write your own Nix
-expression based on that, or completely new.)  You can download the
+expression based on it, or completely new ones.)  You can download the
 latest version from <ulink
 url='http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix' />.  You probably want
 the latest unstable release; currently the stable releases tend to lag
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ where <literal>nixpkgs-<replaceable>version</replaceable></literal> is
 where you've unpacked the release.</para>
 
 <para>It is also possible to see the <emphasis>status</emphasis> of
-available component, i.e., whether they are installed into the user
+available components, i.e., whether they are installed into the user
 environment and/or present in the system:
 
 <screen>
@@ -69,12 +69,13 @@ IPS bison-1.875d
 The first character (<literal>I</literal>) indicates whether the
 component is installed in your current user environment.  The second
 (<literal>P</literal>) indicates whether it is present on your system
-(in which case installing it into your user environment would be very
-quick).  The last one (<literal>S</literal>) indicates whether there
-is a so-called <emphasis>substitute</emphasis> for the component,
-which is Nix's mechanism for doing binary deployment.  It just means
-that Nix know that it can fetch a pre-built component from somewhere
-(typically a network server) instead of building it locally.</para>
+(in which case installing it into your user environment would be a
+very quick operation).  The last one (<literal>S</literal>) indicates
+whether there is a so-called <emphasis>substitute</emphasis> for the
+component, which is Nix's mechanism for doing binary deployment.  It
+just means that Nix know that it can fetch a pre-built component from
+somewhere (typically a network server) instead of building it
+locally.</para>
 
 <para>So now that we have a set of Nix expressions we can build the
 components contained in them.  This is done using <literal>nix-env
@@ -91,8 +92,8 @@ system</ulink>).</para>
 <para>When you do this for the first time, Nix will start building
 Subversion and all its dependencies.  This will take quite a while —
 typically an hour or two on modern machines.  Fortunately, there is a
-faster way (so just do a Ctrl-C on that install operation!): you just
-need to tell Nix that pre-built binaries of all those components are
+faster way (so do a Ctrl-C on that install operation!): you just need
+to tell Nix that pre-built binaries of all those components are
 available somewhere.  This is done using the
 <command>nix-pull</command> command, which must be supplied with a URL
 containing a <emphasis>manifest</emphasis> describing what binaries
@@ -110,7 +111,7 @@ downloading binaries from <systemitem
 class='fqdomainname'>catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl</systemitem>, instead of
 building them from source.  This might still take a while since all
 dependencies must be downloaded, but on a reasonably fast connection
-such as an ADSL line it's on the order of a few minutes.</para>
+such as an DSL line it's on the order of a few minutes.</para>
 
 <para>Naturally, packages can also be uninstalled:
 
@@ -127,10 +128,10 @@ $ nix-env -f nixpkgs-<replaceable>version</replaceable> -u subversion</screen>
 
 This will <emphasis>only</emphasis> upgrade Subversion if there is a
 <quote>newer</quote> version in the new set of Nix expressions, as
-defined by some pretty much arbitrary rules regarding ordering of
-version numbers (which generally do what you'd expect of them).  To
-just unconditionally replace Subversion with whatever version is in
-the Nix expressions, use <parameter>-i</parameter> instead of
+defined by some pretty arbitrary rules regarding ordering of version
+numbers (which generally do what you'd expect of them).  To just
+unconditionally replace Subversion with whatever version is in the Nix
+expressions, use <parameter>-i</parameter> instead of
 <parameter>-u</parameter>; <parameter>-i</parameter> will remove
 whatever version is already installed.</para>
 
@@ -261,7 +262,7 @@ lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default-43-link -> /nix/store/84c85f89ddbf...-user-env
 lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default -> default-43-link</screen>
 
 This shows a profile called <filename>default</filename>.  The file
-<filename>default</filename> itself is actually a symlink that point
+<filename>default</filename> itself is actually a symlink that points
 to the current generation.  When we do a <command>nix-env</command>
 operation, a new user environment and generation link are created
 based on the current one, and finally the <filename>default</filename>
@@ -295,13 +296,13 @@ $ nix-env --list-generations</screen></para>
 figure above.  You generally wouldn't have
 <filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/<replaceable>some-profile</replaceable>/bin</filename>
 in your <envar>PATH</envar>.  Rather, there is a symlink
-<filename>~/.nix-profile</filename> that point to your current
+<filename>~/.nix-profile</filename> that points to your current
 profile.  This means that you should put
 <filename>~/.nix-profile/bin</filename> in your <envar>PATH</envar>
 (and indeed, that's what the initialisation script
 <filename>/nix/etc/profile.d/nix.sh</filename> does).  This makes it
-easier to switch to a different profile, which is exactly what the
-command <command>nix-env --switch-profile</command> does:
+easier to switch to a different profile.  You can do that using the
+command <command>nix-env --switch-profile</command>:
 
 <screen>
 $ nix-env --switch-profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/my-profile
@@ -311,14 +312,14 @@ $ nix-env --switch-profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/default</screen>
 These commands switch to the <filename>my-profile</filename> and
 default profile, respectively.  If the profile doesn't exist, it will
 be created automatically.  You should be careful about storing a
-profile in another location that the <filename>profiles</filename>
-directory, since otherwise it might not be used as a root to the
-garbage collection (see section <xref linkend='sec-garbage-collection'
+profile in another location than the <filename>profiles</filename>
+directory, since otherwise it might not be used as a root of the
+garbage collector (see section <xref linkend='sec-garbage-collection'
 />).</para>
 
 <para>All <command>nix-env</command> operations work on the profile
 pointed to by <command>~/.nix-profile</command>, but you can override
-this on using the <option>--profile</option> option (abbreviation
+this using the <option>--profile</option> option (abbreviation
 <option>-p</option>):
 
 <screen>
@@ -335,7 +336,7 @@ This will <emphasis>not</emphasis> change the
 <para><command>nix-env</command> operations such as upgrades
 (<option>-u</option>) and uninstall (<option>-e</option>) never
 actually delete components from the system.  All they do (as shown
-above) is to make a new user environment that no longer contains
+above) is to create a new user environment that no longer contains
 symlinks to the <quote>deleted</quote> components.</para>
 
 <para>Of course, since disk space is not infinite, unused components
@@ -414,10 +415,10 @@ a set of Nix expressions and a manifest.  Using the command
 with whatever is available at that URL.</para>
 
 <para>You can <quote>subscribe</quote> to a channel using
-<command>nix-channel --subscribe</command>, e.g.,
+<command>nix-channel --add</command>, e.g.,
 
 <screen>
-$ nix-channel --subscribe http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/channels/nixpkgs-unstable</screen>
+$ nix-channel --add http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/channels/nixpkgs-unstable</screen>
 
 subscribes you to a channel that always contains that latest version
 of the Nix Packages collection.  (Instead of
@@ -446,9 +447,9 @@ makes the union of each channel's Nix expressions the default for
 $ nix-env -u '*'</screen>
 
 to upgrade all components in your profile to the latest versions
-available in the channels.</para>
+available in the subscribed channels.</para>
 
 </sect1>
 
 
-</chapter>
\ No newline at end of file
+</chapter>
diff --git a/doc/manual/quick-start.xml b/doc/manual/quick-start.xml
index 2350aed34bcd..e12b28da25bb 100644
--- a/doc/manual/quick-start.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/quick-start.xml
@@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ $ nix-env --rollback</screen>
 
 <listitem><para>You should periodically run the Nix garbage collector
 to get rid of unused packages, since uninstalls or upgrades don't
-actual delete them:
+actually delete them:
 
 <screen>
 $ nix-env --delete-generations old
@@ -115,4 +115,4 @@ second command actually deletes them.</para></listitem>
 
 </orderedlist>
 
-</chapter>
\ No newline at end of file
+</chapter>