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doc/hacking: note a cause of ./configure failing under zsh #8455

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doc/hacking: note a cause of ./configure failing under zsh #8455

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6 changes: 6 additions & 0 deletions doc/manual/src/contributing/hacking.md
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Expand Up @@ -46,6 +46,12 @@ To build Nix itself in this shell:
[nix-shell]$ make -j $NIX_BUILD_CORES
```

> **Note**
>
> If using zsh and `./configure` is failing, use `${=configureFlags}` in place
> of `$configureFlags` so the configure flags are expanded to multiple words as
> they are in `sh` compatible shells.
Comment on lines +52 to +53
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@fricklerhandwerk fricklerhandwerk Jun 7, 2023 •
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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]$ zsh

is 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.


To install it in `$(pwd)/outputs` and test it:

```console
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