The section was strange to read, as the initial example already used `listOf' which is mentioned in the very first paragraph. Then you read in a subsection about `listOf' and the exact same example is given once again.
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.