nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/README

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.