Meta Attributes Like Nix packages, NixOS modules can declare meta-attributes to provide extra information. Module meta attributes are defined in the meta.nix special module. meta is a top level attribute like options and config. Available meta-attributes are maintainers and doc. Each of the meta-attributes must be defined at most once per module file. { config, lib, pkgs, ... }: { options = { ... }; config = { ... }; meta = { maintainers = with lib.maintainers; [ ericsagnes ]; doc = ./default.xml; }; } maintainers contains a list of the module maintainers. doc points to a valid DocBook file containing the module documentation. Its contents is automatically added to . Changes to a module documentation have to be checked to not break building the NixOS manual: $ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual