doc/hacking: note a cause of ./configure failing under zsh #8455
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In the default configuration of zsh, unquoted parameters do not have
field expansion performed, so `./configure $configureFlags` will give
./configure only one argument in argv. The solution to this is to set
the shell option `SH_WORD_SPLIT` or, easier, specify it as
`${=configureFlags}` to force this behaviour for one expansion.
Omission of this can cause configure to fail at finding rapidcheck.
The practical reason why someone might be using this guide with zsh is
for example direnv or executing zsh with `nix develop`.
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Why not change the command invocation itself instead? It seems it wouldn't break calls from bash. We also have an (unfortunately highly redundant) section using stable commands that also needs updating, and it would certainly be more sustainable if we kept the amount of duplicated text minimal. |
Are you sure? It doesn't seem to work for me:
Maybe I can move it into a common section? But it might be harder to see. |
| > of `$configureFlags` so the configure flags are expanded to multiple words as | ||
| > they are in `sh` compatible shells. |
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#8455 (comment) Then the wording is misleading here. It reads to me as "using this syntax is the sh compatible way of expanding space-delimited strings into lists".
The entire premise may be off here. nix develop does some magic to hook you into the builder executable that happens to be bash. Assuming the user essentially does
nix develop
[nix-shell]$ zshis too much for this manual to take care of. It would be in the user's responsibility to know how to pass around environment variables in their shell of choice. This type of hack is nixos.wiki material in my opinion, which is essentially a large dump of such hacks (with a few exceptions that should become upstream documentation). Please point out if I'm completely mistaken here. Otherwise I suggest closing this PR.
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Use of direnv does not seem that unreasonable of a use case and I learned about this particularity of word expansion the day I filed this PR after using zsh as my main shell for five years. It's not a terribly obvious thing. But I understand your view as well.
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This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2023-06-08-documentation-team-meeting-notes-53/28938/1 |
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Related: #9680 I'm closing this for the reasons stated previously #8455 (comment). We should instead solve the underlying issue: #7501 |
In the default configuration of zsh, unquoted parameters do not have field expansion performed, so
./configure $configureFlagswill give ./configure only one argument in argv. The solution to this is to set the shell optionSH_WORD_SPLITor, easier, specify it as${=configureFlags}to force this behaviour for one expansion.Omission of this can cause configure to fail at finding rapidcheck.
The practical reason why someone might be using this guide with zsh is for example direnv or executing zsh with
nix develop.