# Information flow in the Nix ecosystem

The diagram shows a simplified model of the information flow in the Nix ecosystem.
Its purpose is to make dependencies of the documentation types more explicit.
Note that it does not show issues and pull requests on GitHub, which host a wealth of ephemeral information.

Nodes are places or resources, edges denote an "informed by" relation, and edge labels are units of information.
Read the example as "A is informed by X and placed in Y":

```mermaid
flowchart LR
  X --> |A| Y
```

Information resources – communication platforms – are distinguished by mode of interaction:

*Streams* can be appended to:

- The amount of information in them grows without bounds.
- Only recent items are relevant.

*Artifacts* can be changed:

- The amount of information in them is strictly bounded.
- All items should be up to date.

```mermaid
flowchart
  Matrix --> |summary| Discourse
  events[meetings and events] --> |meeting notes, report| Discourse
  external[external sources] --> |link| Discourse
  Discourse --> |draft| RFCs --> |implementation| code
  RFCs --> |explanation| docs
  code --> |reference| manuals --> |guide| docs[nix.dev]
  Discourse --> |tutorial| docs
  subgraph stream
    Matrix
    events
    external
    Discourse
    RFCs
  end
  subgraph artifact
    code
    manuals
    docs
  end
```

Arrows point roughly towards

- decreasing rate of change
- increasing public visibility