
If a package's meta has `knownVulnerabilities`, like so: stdenv.mkDerivation { name = "foobar-1.2.3"; ... meta.knownVulnerabilities = [ "CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution" "CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation" ]; } and a user attempts to install the package, they will be greeted with a warning indicating that maybe they don't want to install it: error: Package ‘foobar-1.2.3’ in ‘...default.nix:20’ is marked as insecure, refusing to evaluate. Known issues: - CVE-0000-00000: remote code execution - CVE-0000-00001: local privilege escalation You can install it anyway by whitelisting this package, using the following methods: a) for `nixos-rebuild` you can add ‘foobar-1.2.3’ to `nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages` in the configuration.nix, like so: { nixpkgs.config.permittedInsecurePackages = [ "foobar-1.2.3" ]; } b) For `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-shell` or any other Nix command you can add ‘foobar-1.2.3’ to `permittedInsecurePackages` in ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix, like so: { permittedInsecurePackages = [ "foobar-1.2.3" ]; } Adding either of these configurations will permit this specific version to be installed. A third option also exists: NIXPKGS_ALLOW_INSECURE=1 nix-build ... though I specifically avoided having a global file-based toggle to disable this check. This way, users don't disable it once in order to get a single package, and then don't realize future packages are insecure.
To build the manual, you need Nix installed on your system (no need for NixOS). To install Nix, follow the instructions at https://nixos.org/nix/download.html When you have Nix on your system, in the root directory of the project (i.e., `nixpkgs`), run: nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual.x86_64-linux When this command successfully finishes, it will tell you where the manual got generated.