The DocBook sources of the Nixpkgs manual are in the doc subdirectory of the Nixpkgs repository. You can quickly check your edits with make: $ cd /path/to/nixpkgs/doc $ nix-shell [nix-shell]$ make If you experience problems, run xmloscopy --docbook5 ./manual.xml ./manual-full.xml inside the nix-shell to help understand the docbook errors. After making modifications to the manual, it's important to build it before committing. You can do that as follows: $ cd /path/to/nixpkgs/doc $ nix-shell [nix-shell]$ make clean [nix-shell]$ nix-build . If the build succeeds, the manual will be in ./result/share/doc/nixpkgs/manual.html.