# Hacking

This section provides some notes on how to hack on Nix. To get the latest version of Nix from GitHub:

    $ git clone git://github.com/NixOS/nix.git
    $ cd nix

To build it and its dependencies:

    $ nix-build release.nix -A build.x86_64-linux

To build all dependencies and start a shell in which all environment variables are set up so that those dependencies can be found:

    $ nix-shell

To build Nix itself in this shell:

    [nix-shell]$ ./bootstrap.sh
    [nix-shell]$ configurePhase
    [nix-shell]$ make

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

    [nix-shell]$ make install
    [nix-shell]$ make installcheck