
PHP 5.3 is EOL (see http://php.net/supported-versions.php). NixOS 14.12 is a good opportunity to drop it.
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.