hash for which no local expansion is available, Nix can execute a
  `substitute' which should produce a path with such a hash.

  This is policy-free since Nix does not in any way specify how the
  substitute should work, i.e., it's an arbitrary (unnormalised)
  fstate expression.  For example, `nix-pull' registers substitutes
  that fetch Nix archives from the network (through `wget') and unpack
  them, but any other method is possible as well.  This is an
  improvement over the old Nix sharing scheme, which had a policy
  (fetching through `wget') built in.

  The sharing scheme doesn't work completely yet because successors
  from fstate rewriting have to be registered on the receiving side.
  Probably the whole successor stuff can be folded up into the
  substitute mechanism; this would be a nice simplification.

  sharing package directories (i.e., the result of building a Nix
  descriptor).

  `nix-pull-prebuilts' obtains a list of all known prebuilts by
  consulting the paths and URLs specified in
  $prefix/etc/nix/prebuilts.conf.  The mappings ($pkghash,
  $prebuilthash) and ($prebuilthash, $location) are registered with
  Nix so that it can use the prebuilt with hash $prebuilthash when
  installing a package with hash $pkghash by downloading and unpacking
  $location.

  `nix-push-prebuilts' creates prebuilts for all packages for which no
  prebuilt is known to exist.  It can then optionally upload these
  to the network through rsync.

  `nix-[pull|push]-prebuilts' just provide a policy.  Nix provides the
  mechanism through the `nix [export|regprebuilt|regurl]' commands.