* Split overview chapter into a chapter on package management and a

  chapter on writing Nix expressions.

6 files changed, 384 insertions, 455 deletions

diff --git a/doc/manual/Makefile.am b/doc/manual/Makefile.am
index ef1a4d4a95..28ebb4d155 100644
--- a/doc/manual/Makefile.am
+++ b/doc/manual/Makefile.am
@@ -10,7 +10,8 @@ man1_MANS = nix-env.1 nix-store.1 nix-instantiate.1 \
  nix-collect-garbage.1 nix-push.1 nix-pull.1 \
  nix-prefetch-url.1
 
-SOURCES = manual.xml introduction.xml installation.xml overview.xml \
+SOURCES = manual.xml introduction.xml installation.xml \
+ package-management.xml writing-nix-expressions.xml \
  $(man1_MANS:.1=.xml) \
  troubleshooting.xml bugs.xml opt-common.xml opt-common-syn.xml \
  quick-start.xml nix-lang-ref.xml style.css images
diff --git a/doc/manual/manual.xml b/doc/manual/manual.xml
index 930da3a891..d2f19f0309 100644
--- a/doc/manual/manual.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/manual.xml
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@
 <!ENTITY introduction SYSTEM "introduction.xml">
 <!ENTITY quick-start SYSTEM "quick-start.xml">
 <!ENTITY installation SYSTEM "installation.xml">
-<!ENTITY overview SYSTEM "overview.xml">
+<!ENTITY package-management SYSTEM "package-management.xml">
+<!ENTITY writing-nix-expressions SYSTEM "writing-nix-expressions.xml">
 <!ENTITY opt-common SYSTEM "opt-common.xml">
 <!ENTITY opt-common-syn SYSTEM "opt-common-syn.xml">
 <!ENTITY nix-env SYSTEM "nix-env.xml">
@@ -44,7 +45,8 @@
   &introduction;
   &quick-start;
   &installation;
-  &overview;
+  &package-management;
+  &writing-nix-expressions;
 
   <appendix>
     <title>Command Reference</title>
diff --git a/doc/manual/overview.xml b/doc/manual/overview.xml
deleted file mode 100644
index d3a7e443bd..0000000000
--- a/doc/manual/overview.xml
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,450 +0,0 @@
-<chapter id='chap-overview'>
-  <title>Overview</title>
-
-  <para>
-    This chapter provides a guided tour of Nix.
-  </para>
-
-
-  
-  <!--######################################################################-->
-
-  <sect1>
-    <title>Basic package management</title>
-
-    <para>
-      Let's start from the perspective of an end user.  Common operations at
-      this level are to install and remove packages, ask what packages are
-      installed or available for installation, and so on.  These are operations
-      on the <emphasis>user environment</emphasis>: the set of packages that a
-      user <quote>sees</quote>.  In a command line Unix environment, this means
-      the set of programs that are available through the <envar>PATH</envar>
-      environment variable.  (In other environments it might mean the set of
-      programs available on the desktop, through the start menu, and so on.)
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      The terms <quote>installation</quote> and <quote>uninstallation</quote>
-      are used in this context to denote the act of adding or removing packages
-      from the user environment.  In Nix, these operations are dissociated from
-      the physical copying or deleting of files.  Installation requires that
-      the files constituting the package are present, but they may be present
-      beforehand.  Likewise, uninstallation does not actually delete any files;
-      this is done automatically by running a garbage collector.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      User environments are manipulated through the <command>nix-env</command>
-      command.  The query operation can be used to see what packages are
-      currently installed.
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ nix-env -q
-MozillaFirebird-0.7
-sylpheed-0.9.7
-pan-0.14.2</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      (<option>-q</option> is actually short for <option>--query
-        --installed</option>.)  The package names are symbolic: they don't have
-      any particular significance to Nix (as they shouldn't, since they are not
-      unique&mdash;there can be many derivations with the same name).  Note that
-      these packages have many dependencies (e.g., Mozilla uses the
-      <literal>gtk+</literal> package) but these have not been installed in the
-      user environment, though they are present on the system.  Generally,
-      there is no need to install such packages; only packages containing
-      programs should be installed.
-    </para>
-      
-    <para>
-      To install packages, a <emphasis>Nix expression</emphasis> is required
-      that tells Nix how to build that package.  There is a <ulink
-        url='https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/dist/trace/trace-nixpkgs-trunk.tar.bz2'>set 
-        of standard of Nix expressions</ulink> for many common packages.
-      Assuming that you have downloaded and unpacked these, you can view the
-      set of available packages:
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ nix-env -qaf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
-gettext-0.12.1
-sylpheed-0.9.7
-aterm-2.0
-gtk+-1.2.10
-apache-httpd-2.0.48
-pan-0.14.2
-...</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      The Nix expression in the file <filename>i686-linux.nix</filename> yields
-      the set of packages for a Linux system running on x86 hardware.  For
-      other platforms, copy and modify this file for your platform as
-      appropriate. [TODO: improve this]
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      It is also possible to see the <emphasis>status</emphasis> of available
-      packages, i.e., whether they are installed into the user environment
-      and/or present in the system:
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ nix-env -qasf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
--P gettext-0.12.1
-IP sylpheed-0.9.7
--- aterm-2.0
--P gtk+-1.2.10</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      This reveals that the <literal>sylpheed</literal> package is already
-      installed, or more precisely, that exactly the same instantiation of
-      <literal>sylpheed</literal> is installed.  This guarantees that the
-      available package is exactly the same as the installed package with
-      regard to sources, dependencies, build flags, and so on.  Similarly, we
-      see that the <literal>gettext</literal> and <literal>gtk+</literal>
-      packages are present but not installed in the user environment, while the
-      <literal>aterm</literal> package is not installed or present at all (so,
-      if we were to install it, it would have to be built or downloaded first).
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      The install operation is used install available packages from a Nix
-      environment.  To install the <literal>pan</literal> package (a
-      newsreader), you would do:
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ nix-env -if pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix pan</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      Since installation may take a long time, depending on whether any
-      packages need to be built or downloaded, it's a good idea to make
-      <command>nix-env</command> run verbosely by using the <option>-v</option>
-      (<option>--verbose</option>) option.  This option may be repeated to
-      increase the level of verbosity.  A good value is 3
-      (<option>-vvv</option>).
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      In fact, if you run this command verbosely you will observe that Nix
-      starts to build many packages, including large and fundamental ones such
-      as <literal>glibc</literal> and <literal>gcc</literal>.  I.e., you are
-      performing a source installation.  This is generally undesirable, since
-      installation from sources may require large amounts of disk and CPU
-      resources.  Therefore a <quote>binary</quote> installation is generally
-      preferable.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      Rather than provide different mechanisms to create and perform
-      the installation of binary packages, Nix supports binary deployment
-      <emphasis>transparently</emphasis> through a generic mechanism of
-      <emphasis>substitute expressions</emphasis>.  If an request is made to
-      build some Nix expression, Nix will first try to build any substitutes
-      for that expression.  These substitutes presumably perform an identical
-      build operation with respect to the result, but require less resources.
-      For instance, a substitute that downloads a pre-built package from the
-      network requires less CPU and disk resources, and possibly less time.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      Nix's use of cryptographic hashes makes this entirely safe.  It is not
-      possible, for instance, to accidentally substitute a build of some
-      package for a Solaris or Windows system for a build on a SuSE/x86 system.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      While the substitute mechanism is a generic mechanism, Nix provides two
-      standard tools called <command>nix-pull</command> and
-      <command>nix-push</command> that maintain and use a shared cache of
-      prebuilt derivations on some network site (reachable through HTTP).  If
-      you attempt to install some package that someone else has previously
-      built and <quote>pushed</quote> into the cache, and you have done a
-      <quote>pull</quote> to register substitutes that download these prebuilt
-      packages, then the installation will automatically use these.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      For example, to pull from our <ulink
-        url='http://losser.st-lab.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/nix-dist/'>cache</ulink> of
-      prebuilt packages (at the time of writing, for SuSE Linux/x86), use the
-      following command:
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ nix-pull http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/nixpkgs-<replaceable>version</replaceable>/MANIFEST
-obtaining list of Nix archives at http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/nixpkgs-<replaceable>version</replaceable>/MANIFEST...
-...</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      If <command>nix-pull</command> is run without any arguments, it will pull
-      from the URLs specified in the file
-      <filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/etc/nix/prebuilts.conf</filename>.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      Assuming that the <literal>pan</literal> installation produced no errors,
-      it can be used immediately, that is, it now appears in a directory in the
-      <envar>PATH</envar> environment variable.  Specifically,
-      <envar>PATH</envar> includes the entry
-      <filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/var/nix/profiles/default/bin</filename>, 
-      where
-      <filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/var/nix/profiles/default</filename> 
-      is just a symlink to the current user environment:
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/
-...
-lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default-15-link -> /nix/store/1871...12b0-user-environment
-lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default-16-link -> /nix/store/59ba...df6b-user-environment
-lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default -> default-16-link</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      That is, <filename>default</filename> in this example is a link
-      to <filename>default-16-link</filename>, which is the current
-      user environment.  Before the installation, it pointed to
-      <filename>default-15-link</filename>.  Note that this means that
-      you can atomically roll-back to the previous user environment by
-      pointing the symlink <filename>default</filename> at
-      <filename>default-15-link</filename> again.  This also shows
-      that operations such as installation are atomic in the Nix
-      system: any arbitrarily complex set of installation,
-      uninstallation, or upgrade actions eventually boil down to the
-      single operation of pointing a symlink somewhere else (which can
-      be implemented atomically in Unix).
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      What's in a user environment? It's just a set of symlinks to the files
-      that constitute the installed packages.  For instance:
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/default-16-link/bin
-lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... MozillaFirebird -> /nix/store/35f8...4ae6-MozillaFirebird-0.7/bin/MozillaFirebird
-lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... svn -> /nix/store/3829...fb5d-subversion-0.32.1/bin/svn
-...</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      Note that, e.g., <filename>svn</filename> =
-      <filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin/svn</filename> =
-      <filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default-16-link/bin/svn</filename> =
-      <filename>/nix/store/59ba...df6b-user-environment/bin/svn</filename> =
-      <filename>/nix/store/3829...fb5d-subversion-0.32.1/bin/svn</filename>.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      Naturally, packages can also be uninstalled:
-    </para>
-
-    <screen>
-$ nix-env -e pan</screen>
-
-    <para>
-      This means that the package is removed from the user
-      environment.  It is <emphasis>not</emphasis> yet removed from
-      the system.  When a package is uninstalled from a user
-      environment, it may still be used by other packages, or may
-      still be present in other user environments.  Deleting it under
-      such conditions would break those other packages or user
-      environments.  To prevent this, packages are only
-      <quote>physically</quote> deleted by running the Nix garbage
-      collector, which searches for all packages in the Nix store that
-      are no longer <quote>reachable</quote> from outside the store.
-      Thus, uninstalling a package is always safe: it cannot break
-      other packages.
-    </para>
-
-    <para>
-      Upgrading packages is easy.  Given a Nix expression that
-      contains newer versions of installed packages (that is, packages
-      with the same package name, but a higher version number),
-      <command>nix-env -u</command> will replace the installed package
-      in the user environment with the newer package.  For example,
-      
-      <screen>
-$ nix-env -uf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix pan</screen>
-
-      looks for a newer version of Pan, and installs it if found.
-      Also useful is the ability to upgrade <emphasis>all</emphasis>
-      packages:
-      
-      <screen>
-$ nix-env -uf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix '*'</screen>
-
-      The asterisk matches all installed packages<footnote><para>No,
-      we don't support arbitrary regular
-      expressions</para></footnote>.  Note that <literal>*</literal>
-      must be quoted to prevent shell globbing.
-    </para>
-
-  </sect1>
-
-
-  
-  <!--######################################################################-->
-
-  <sect1>
-    <title>Writing Nix expressions</title>
-
-    <sect2>
-      <title>A simple Nix expression</title>
-
-      <para>
-        This section shows how to write simple Nix expressions&mdash;the things
-        that describe how to build a package.
-      </para>
-
-      <example id='ex-hello-nix'>
-        <title>Nix expression for GNU Hello</title>
-        <programlisting>
-{stdenv, fetchurl, perl}: <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-1' />
-
-derivation { <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-2' />
-  name = "hello-2.1.1"; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-3' />
-  system = stdenv.system; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-4' />
-  builder = ./builder.sh; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-5' />
-  src = fetchurl { <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-6' />
-    url = ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/gnu/hello/hello-2.1.1.tar.gz;
-    md5 = "70c9ccf9fac07f762c24f2df2290784d";
-  };
-  stdenv = stdenv; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-7' />
-  perl = perl;
-}</programlisting>
-      </example>
-
-      <para>
-        A simple Nix expression is shown in <xref linkend='ex-hello-nix' />. It
-        describes how to the build the <ulink
-          url='http://www.gnu.org/directory/GNU/hello.html'>GNU Hello
-          package</ulink>.  This package has several dependencies.  First, it
-        requires a number of other packages, such as a C compiler, standard
-        Unix shell tools, and Perl.  Rather than have this Nix expression refer
-        to and use specific versions of these packages, it should be generic;
-        that is, it should be a <emphasis>function</emphasis> that takes the
-        required packages as inputs and yield a build of the GNU Hello package
-        as a result.  This Nix expression defines a function with three
-        arguments <xref linkend='ex-hello-nix-co-1' />, namely:
-        <orderedlist>
-          <listitem><para><varname>stdenv</varname>, which should be a
-              <emphasis>standard environment package</emphasis>.  The standard
-              environment is a set of tools and other components that would be
-              expected in a fairly minimal Unix-like environment: a C compiler
-              and linker, Unix shell tools, and so on.</para>
-          </listitem>
-          <listitem><para><varname>fetchurl</varname>, which should be a
-              function that given parameters <varname>url</varname> and
-              <varname>md5</varname>, will fetch a file from the specified
-              location and check that this file has the given MD5 hash code.
-              The hash is required because build operations must be
-              <emphasis>pure</emphasis>: given the same inputs they should
-              always yield the same output.  Since network resources can change
-              at any time, we must in some way guarantee what the result will
-              be.</para>
-          </listitem>
-          <listitem><para><varname>perl</varname>, which should be a Perl
-              interpreter.</para>
-          </listitem>
-        </orderedlist>
-      </para>
-
-      <para>
-        The remainder of the file is the body of the function, which happens to
-        be a <emphasis>derivation</emphasis> <xref
-        linkend='ex-hello-nix-co-2' />, which is the built-in function
-        <varname>derivation</varname> applied to a set of attributes that
-        encode all the necessary information for building the GNU Hello
-        package. 
-      </para>
-
-      <example>
-        <title>Build script (<filename>builder.sh</filename>) for GNU
-          Hello</title>
-        <programlisting>
-#! /bin/sh
-
-buildinputs="$perl"
-. $stdenv/setup || exit 1
-
-tar xvfz $src || exit 1
-cd hello-* || exit 1
-./configure --prefix=$out || exit 1
-make || exit 1
-make install || exit 1</programlisting>
-      </example>
-
-    </sect2>
-
-    <sect2>
-      <title>A more complex Nix expression</title>
-
-      <example id='ex-svn-nix'>
-        <title>Nix expression for Subversion</title>
-        <programlisting>
-{ localServer ? false <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-1' />
-, httpServer ? false
-, sslSupport ? false
-, swigBindings ? false
-, stdenv, fetchurl
-, openssl ? null, httpd ? null, db4 ? null, expat, swig ? null
-}:
-
-assert !isNull expat; <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-2' />
-assert localServer -> !isNull db4;
-assert httpServer -> !isNull httpd &amp;&amp; httpd.expat == expat; <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-3' />
-assert sslSupport -> !isNull openssl &amp;&amp; (httpServer -> httpd.openssl == openssl);
-assert swigBindings -> !isNull swig;
-
-derivation {
-  name = "subversion-0.32.1";
-  system = stdenv.system;
-
-  builder = ./builder.sh;
-  src = fetchurl {
-    url = http://svn.collab.net/tarballs/subversion-0.32.1.tar.gz;
-    md5 = "b06717a8ef50db4b5c4d380af00bd901";
-  };
-
-  localServer = localServer;
-  httpServer = httpServer;
-  sslSupport = sslSupport;
-  swigBindings = swigBindings;
-
-  stdenv = stdenv;
-  openssl = if sslSupport then openssl else null; <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-4' />
-  httpd = if httpServer then httpd else null;
-  expat = expat;
-  db4 = if localServer then db4 else null;
-  swig = if swigBindings then swig else null;
-}</programlisting>
-      </example>
-
-      <para>
-        This example shows several features.  Default parameters <xref
-          linkend='ex-svn-nix-co-1'/> can be used to simplify call sites: if an
-        argument that has a default is omitted, its default value is used.
-      </para>
-
-      <para>
-        You can use <emphasis>assertions</emphasis> to test whether arguments
-        satisfy certain constraints.  The simple assertion <xref
-          linkend='ex-svn-nix-co-2'/> tests whether the
-        <varname>expat</varname> argument is not a null value.  The more
-        complex assertion <xref linkend='ex-svn-nix-co-3'/> says that if
-        Subversion is built with Apache support, then <varname>httpd</varname>
-        (the Apache package) must not be null and it must have been built using
-        the same instance of the <varname>expat</varname> library as was passed
-        to the Subversion expression.  This is since the Subversion code is
-        dynamically linked against the Apache code and they both use Expat,
-        they must be linked against the same instance&mdash;otherwise a
-        conflict might occur. 
-      </para>
-
-    </sect2>
-
-  </sect1>
-
-
-</chapter>
diff --git a/doc/manual/package-management.xml b/doc/manual/package-management.xml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..90f8f95b65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/package-management.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,229 @@
+<chapter id='chap-package-management'><title>Package Management</title>
+
+<para>Let's start from the perspective of an end user.  Common
+operations at this level are to install and remove packages, ask what
+packages are installed or available for installation, and so on.
+These are operations on the <emphasis>user environment</emphasis>: the
+set of packages that a user <quote>sees</quote>.  In a command line
+Unix environment, this means the set of programs that are available
+through the <envar>PATH</envar> environment variable.  (In other
+environments it might mean the set of programs available on the
+desktop, through the start menu, and so on.)</para>
+
+<para>The terms <quote>installation</quote> and
+<quote>uninstallation</quote> are used in this context to denote the
+act of adding or removing packages from the user environment.  In Nix,
+these operations are dissociated from the physical copying or deleting
+of files.  Installation requires that the files constituting the
+package are present, but they may be present beforehand.  Likewise,
+uninstallation does not actually delete any files; this is done
+automatically by running a garbage collector.</para>
+
+<para>User environments are manipulated through the
+<command>nix-env</command> command.  The query operation can be used
+to see what packages are currently installed.</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -q
+MozillaFirebird-0.7
+sylpheed-0.9.7
+pan-0.14.2</screen>
+
+<para>(<option>-q</option> is actually short for <option>--query
+--installed</option>.)  The package names are symbolic: they don't
+have any particular significance to Nix (as they shouldn't, since they
+are not unique&mdash;there can be many derivations with the same
+name).  Note that these packages have many dependencies (e.g., Mozilla
+uses the <literal>gtk+</literal> package) but these have not been
+installed in the user environment, though they are present on the
+system.  Generally, there is no need to install such packages; only
+packages containing programs should be installed.</para>
+      
+<para>To install packages, a <emphasis>Nix expression</emphasis> is
+required that tells Nix how to build that package.  There is a <ulink
+url='https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/dist/trace/trace-nixpkgs-trunk.tar.bz2'>set
+of standard of Nix expressions</ulink> for many common packages.
+Assuming that you have downloaded and unpacked these, you can view the
+set of available packages:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -qaf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
+gettext-0.12.1
+sylpheed-0.9.7
+aterm-2.0
+gtk+-1.2.10
+apache-httpd-2.0.48
+pan-0.14.2
+...</screen>
+
+<para>The Nix expression in the file
+<filename>i686-linux.nix</filename> yields the set of packages for a
+Linux system running on x86 hardware.  For other platforms, copy and
+modify this file for your platform as appropriate. [TODO: improve
+this]</para>
+
+<para>It is also possible to see the <emphasis>status</emphasis> of
+available packages, i.e., whether they are installed into the user
+environment and/or present in the system:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -qasf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
+-P gettext-0.12.1
+IP sylpheed-0.9.7
+-- aterm-2.0
+-P gtk+-1.2.10</screen>
+
+<para>This reveals that the <literal>sylpheed</literal> package is
+already installed, or more precisely, that exactly the same
+instantiation of <literal>sylpheed</literal> is installed.  This
+guarantees that the available package is exactly the same as the
+installed package with regard to sources, dependencies, build flags,
+and so on.  Similarly, we see that the <literal>gettext</literal> and
+<literal>gtk+</literal> packages are present but not installed in the
+user environment, while the <literal>aterm</literal> package is not
+installed or present at all (so, if we were to install it, it would
+have to be built or downloaded first).</para>
+
+<para>The install operation is used install available packages from a
+Nix environment.  To install the <literal>pan</literal> package (a
+newsreader), you would do:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -if pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix pan</screen>
+
+<para>Since installation may take a long time, depending on whether
+any packages need to be built or downloaded, it's a good idea to make
+<command>nix-env</command> run verbosely by using the
+<option>-v</option> (<option>--verbose</option>) option.  This option
+may be repeated to increase the level of verbosity.  A good value is 3
+(<option>-vvv</option>).</para>
+
+<para>In fact, if you run this command verbosely you will observe that
+Nix starts to build many packages, including large and fundamental
+ones such as <literal>glibc</literal> and <literal>gcc</literal>.
+I.e., you are performing a source installation.  This is generally
+undesirable, since installation from sources may require large amounts
+of disk and CPU resources.  Therefore a <quote>binary</quote>
+installation is generally preferable.</para>
+
+<para>Rather than provide different mechanisms to create and perform
+the installation of binary packages, Nix supports binary deployment
+<emphasis>transparently</emphasis> through a generic mechanism of
+<emphasis>substitute expressions</emphasis>.  If an request is made to
+build some Nix expression, Nix will first try to build any substitutes
+for that expression.  These substitutes presumably perform an
+identical build operation with respect to the result, but require less
+resources.  For instance, a substitute that downloads a pre-built
+package from the network requires less CPU and disk resources, and
+possibly less time.</para>
+
+<para>Nix's use of cryptographic hashes makes this entirely safe.  It
+is not possible, for instance, to accidentally substitute a build of
+some package for a Solaris or Windows system for a build on a SuSE/x86
+system.</para>
+
+<para>While the substitute mechanism is a generic mechanism, Nix
+provides two standard tools called <command>nix-pull</command> and
+<command>nix-push</command> that maintain and use a shared cache of
+prebuilt derivations on some network site (reachable through HTTP).
+If you attempt to install some package that someone else has
+previously built and <quote>pushed</quote> into the cache, and you
+have done a <quote>pull</quote> to register substitutes that download
+these prebuilt packages, then the installation will automatically use
+these.</para>
+
+<para>For example, to pull from our <ulink
+url='http://losser.st-lab.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/nix-dist/'>cache</ulink> of
+prebuilt packages (at the time of writing, for SuSE Linux/x86), use
+the following command:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-pull http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/nixpkgs-<replaceable>version</replaceable>/MANIFEST
+obtaining list of Nix archives at http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/nixpkgs-<replaceable>version</replaceable>/MANIFEST...
+...</screen>
+
+<para>If <command>nix-pull</command> is run without any arguments, it
+will pull from the URLs specified in the file
+<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/etc/nix/prebuilts.conf</filename>.</para>
+
+<para>Assuming that the <literal>pan</literal> installation produced
+no errors, it can be used immediately, that is, it now appears in a
+directory in the <envar>PATH</envar> environment variable.
+Specifically, <envar>PATH</envar> includes the entry
+<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/var/nix/profiles/default/bin</filename>,
+where
+<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/var/nix/profiles/default</filename>
+is just a symlink to the current user environment:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/
+...
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default-15-link -> /nix/store/1871...12b0-user-environment
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default-16-link -> /nix/store/59ba...df6b-user-environment
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default -> default-16-link</screen>
+
+<para>That is, <filename>default</filename> in this example is a link
+to <filename>default-16-link</filename>, which is the current user
+environment.  Before the installation, it pointed to
+<filename>default-15-link</filename>.  Note that this means that you
+can atomically roll-back to the previous user environment by pointing
+the symlink <filename>default</filename> at
+<filename>default-15-link</filename> again.  This also shows that
+operations such as installation are atomic in the Nix system: any
+arbitrarily complex set of installation, uninstallation, or upgrade
+actions eventually boil down to the single operation of pointing a
+symlink somewhere else (which can be implemented atomically in Unix).</para>
+
+<para>What's in a user environment? It's just a set of symlinks to the
+files that constitute the installed packages.  For instance:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/default-16-link/bin
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... MozillaFirebird -> /nix/store/35f8...4ae6-MozillaFirebird-0.7/bin/MozillaFirebird
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... svn -> /nix/store/3829...fb5d-subversion-0.32.1/bin/svn
+...</screen>
+
+<para>Note that, e.g., <filename>svn</filename> =
+<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin/svn</filename> =
+<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default-16-link/bin/svn</filename> =
+<filename>/nix/store/59ba...df6b-user-environment/bin/svn</filename> =
+<filename>/nix/store/3829...fb5d-subversion-0.32.1/bin/svn</filename>.</para>
+
+<para>Naturally, packages can also be uninstalled:</para>
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -e pan</screen>
+
+<para>This means that the package is removed from the user
+environment.  It is <emphasis>not</emphasis> yet removed from the
+system.  When a package is uninstalled from a user environment, it may
+still be used by other packages, or may still be present in other user
+environments.  Deleting it under such conditions would break those
+other packages or user environments.  To prevent this, packages are
+only <quote>physically</quote> deleted by running the Nix garbage
+collector, which searches for all packages in the Nix store that are
+no longer <quote>reachable</quote> from outside the store.  Thus,
+uninstalling a package is always safe: it cannot break other
+packages.</para>
+
+<para>Upgrading packages is easy.  Given a Nix expression that
+contains newer versions of installed packages (that is, packages with
+the same package name, but a higher version number), <command>nix-env
+-u</command> will replace the installed package in the user
+environment with the newer package.  For example,
+      
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -uf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix pan</screen>
+
+looks for a newer version of Pan, and installs it if found.  Also
+useful is the ability to upgrade <emphasis>all</emphasis> packages:
+      
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -uf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix '*'</screen>
+
+The asterisk matches all installed packages<footnote><para>No, we
+don't support arbitrary regular expressions</para></footnote>.  Note
+that <literal>*</literal> must be quoted to prevent shell
+globbing.</para>
+
+</chapter>
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/doc/manual/quick-start.xml b/doc/manual/quick-start.xml
index a6ec25514e..2350aed34b 100644
--- a/doc/manual/quick-start.xml
+++ b/doc/manual/quick-start.xml
@@ -2,8 +2,7 @@
 
 <para>This chapter is for impatient people who don't like reading
 documentation.  For more in-depth information you are kindly referred
-to <xref linkend='chap-installation' /> and <xref
-linkend='chap-overview' />.</para>
+to the following chapters.</para>
 
 <orderedlist>
 
diff --git a/doc/manual/writing-nix-expressions.xml b/doc/manual/writing-nix-expressions.xml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..c4ea5d1f39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/writing-nix-expressions.xml
@@ -0,0 +1,148 @@
+<chapter id='chap-writing-nix-expressions'><title>Writing Nix Expressions</title>
+
+<sect1><title>A simple Nix expression</title>
+
+<para>This section shows how to write simple Nix expressions&mdash;the
+things that describe how to build a package.</para>
+
+<example id='ex-hello-nix'><title>Nix expression for GNU Hello</title>
+<programlisting>
+{stdenv, fetchurl, perl}: <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-1' />
+
+derivation { <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-2' />
+  name = "hello-2.1.1"; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-3' />
+  system = stdenv.system; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-4' />
+  builder = ./builder.sh; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-5' />
+  src = fetchurl { <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-6' />
+    url = ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/gnu/hello/hello-2.1.1.tar.gz;
+    md5 = "70c9ccf9fac07f762c24f2df2290784d";
+  };
+  stdenv = stdenv; <co id='ex-hello-nix-co-7' />
+  perl = perl;
+}</programlisting>
+</example>
+
+<para>A simple Nix expression is shown in <xref linkend='ex-hello-nix'
+/>. It describes how to the build the <ulink
+url='http://www.gnu.org/directory/GNU/hello.html'>GNU Hello
+package</ulink>.  This package has several dependencies.  First, it
+requires a number of other packages, such as a C compiler, standard
+Unix shell tools, and Perl.  Rather than have this Nix expression
+refer to and use specific versions of these packages, it should be
+generic; that is, it should be a <emphasis>function</emphasis> that
+takes the required packages as inputs and yield a build of the GNU
+Hello package as a result.  This Nix expression defines a function
+with three arguments <xref linkend='ex-hello-nix-co-1' />, namely:
+
+  <orderedlist>
+    <listitem><para><varname>stdenv</varname>, which should be a
+    <emphasis>standard environment package</emphasis>.  The standard
+    environment is a set of tools and other components that would be
+    expected in a fairly minimal Unix-like environment: a C compiler
+    and linker, Unix shell tools, and so on.</para></listitem>
+    
+    <listitem><para><varname>fetchurl</varname>, which should be a
+    function that given parameters <varname>url</varname> and
+    <varname>md5</varname>, will fetch a file from the specified
+    location and check that this file has the given MD5 hash code.
+    The hash is required because build operations must be
+    <emphasis>pure</emphasis>: given the same inputs they should
+    always yield the same output.  Since network resources can change
+    at any time, we must in some way guarantee what the result will
+    be.</para></listitem>
+    
+    <listitem><para><varname>perl</varname>, which should be a Perl
+    interpreter.</para></listitem>
+    
+  </orderedlist>
+</para>
+
+<para>The remainder of the file is the body of the function, which
+happens to be a <emphasis>derivation</emphasis> <xref
+linkend='ex-hello-nix-co-2' />, which is the built-in function
+<varname>derivation</varname> applied to a set of attributes that
+encode all the necessary information for building the GNU Hello
+package.</para>
+
+<example><title>Build script (<filename>builder.sh</filename>) for GNU
+Hello</title>
+<programlisting>
+#! /bin/sh
+
+buildinputs="$perl"
+. $stdenv/setup || exit 1
+
+tar xvfz $src || exit 1
+cd hello-* || exit 1
+./configure --prefix=$out || exit 1
+make || exit 1
+make install || exit 1</programlisting>
+</example>
+
+</sect1>
+
+
+<sect1><title>A more complex Nix expression</title>
+
+<example id='ex-svn-nix'><title>Nix expression for Subversion</title>
+<programlisting>
+{ localServer ? false <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-1' />
+, httpServer ? false
+, sslSupport ? false
+, swigBindings ? false
+, stdenv, fetchurl
+, openssl ? null, httpd ? null, db4 ? null, expat, swig ? null
+}:
+
+assert !isNull expat; <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-2' />
+assert localServer -> !isNull db4;
+assert httpServer -> !isNull httpd &amp;&amp; httpd.expat == expat; <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-3' />
+assert sslSupport -> !isNull openssl &amp;&amp; (httpServer -> httpd.openssl == openssl);
+assert swigBindings -> !isNull swig;
+
+derivation {
+  name = "subversion-0.32.1";
+  system = stdenv.system;
+
+  builder = ./builder.sh;
+  src = fetchurl {
+    url = http://svn.collab.net/tarballs/subversion-0.32.1.tar.gz;
+    md5 = "b06717a8ef50db4b5c4d380af00bd901";
+  };
+
+  localServer = localServer;
+  httpServer = httpServer;
+  sslSupport = sslSupport;
+  swigBindings = swigBindings;
+
+  stdenv = stdenv;
+  openssl = if sslSupport then openssl else null; <co id='ex-svn-nix-co-4' />
+  httpd = if httpServer then httpd else null;
+  expat = expat;
+  db4 = if localServer then db4 else null;
+  swig = if swigBindings then swig else null;
+}</programlisting>
+</example>
+
+<para>This example shows several features.  Default parameters <xref
+linkend='ex-svn-nix-co-1'/> can be used to simplify call sites: if an
+argument that has a default is omitted, its default value is
+used.</para>
+
+<para>You can use <emphasis>assertions</emphasis> to test whether
+arguments satisfy certain constraints.  The simple assertion <xref
+linkend='ex-svn-nix-co-2'/> tests whether the <varname>expat</varname>
+argument is not a null value.  The more complex assertion <xref
+linkend='ex-svn-nix-co-3'/> says that if Subversion is built with
+Apache support, then <varname>httpd</varname> (the Apache package)
+must not be null and it must have been built using the same instance
+of the <varname>expat</varname> library as was passed to the
+Subversion expression.  This is since the Subversion code is
+dynamically linked against the Apache code and they both use Expat,
+they must be linked against the same instance&mdash;otherwise a
+conflict might occur.</para>
+
+</sect1>
+
+
+</chapter>