# Mobile NixOS May 2020 Roundup: Documentation, Architecture Cleanup, and a New Example System

DevFeed: [Mobile NixOS May 2020 Roundup: Documentation, Architecture Cleanup, and a New Example System](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/may-2020-round-up-32462.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://mobile.nixos.org/news/2020-06-02-may-2020-round-up.html>)

Author: Samuel Dionne-Riel

Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00Z

Content type: news

Language: en

Sources: [Mobile NixOS news](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/mobile-nixos-news.md>)

Topics: [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [Documentation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/documentation.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [User Experience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/user-experience.md>), [touchscreen](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/touchscreen.md>)

Tags: [architecture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture.md>), [cleanup](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cleanup.md>), [display](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/display.md>), [documentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/documentation.md>), [interface](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/interface.md>), [new-feature](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/new-feature.md>), [series](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/series.md>), [touchscreen](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/touchscreen.md>), [update](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/update.md>)

## AI overview

The May 2020 Mobile NixOS update covers merged documentation and architecture changes, including replacing the device.info option with discrete, well-defined options. It also introduces an examples/hello system that can be cross-compiled and helps users test ports, including touchscreen and display support.

## Source excerpt

This update is the seventh in a series of regular updates on the state of the project. Only changes that have been accepted and merged in Mobile NixOS are chronicled here. There's always more work currently in-progress. Notable changes 11 PRs were merged during the month. Changes are mostly cleanup and documentation related. Documentation changes The biggest change is the addition of an overview of the terms used to define a device (#148). This documentation section should help better understand how devices are composed. The README (#138) as shown on GitHub has been reviewed to better guide users and contributors around the ecosystem, borrowing the organization of the main Nixpkgs README. Though the main reason for this change is that the README started to diverge with the documentation. Removing all examples and referring to the actual documentation files reduces the burden of maintaining multiple documentation fragments. Code and architecture cleanup Through some of the pull requests, a bunch of either dead, or ossified code was found and removed. The main user-facing change is the removal of device.info. The device.info option was a mixed bag of misshapen, undefined options that were at the foundation of all device definitions. The replacement are discrete well-defined options that are defined in understandable categories. Systems define options that they use, making it easier to understand why an option is defined. The main consequence of that change is that the current work-in-progress ports will need to be reviewed to use the new options. As part of #155, additional cleanup was made in the first few commits. New examples/hello system While technically a new feature, the new examples/hello system (#155) is more of a first-user-experience "bugfix" than a useful new feature. This introduces a new example system that can be cross-compiled entirely, and shows an interface to the end-user. This helps fix the biggest complaint about the project: the default build loo