Merge master into staging-next

2 files changed, 51 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/hooks/index.xml b/doc/hooks/index.xml
index ed703c03d8b..0917fac6c0a 100644
--- a/doc/hooks/index.xml
+++ b/doc/hooks/index.xml
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@
  <xi:include href="./libxml2.section.xml" />
  <xi:include href="./meson.section.xml" />
  <xi:include href="./ninja.section.xml" />
+ <xi:include href="./patch-rc-path-hooks.section.xml" />
  <xi:include href="./perl.section.xml" />
  <xi:include href="./pkg-config.section.xml" />
  <xi:include href="./postgresql-test-hook.section.xml" />
diff --git a/doc/hooks/patch-rc-path-hooks.section.md b/doc/hooks/patch-rc-path-hooks.section.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..5c870dc782c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/hooks/patch-rc-path-hooks.section.md
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+
+# `patchRcPath` hooks {#sec-patchRcPathHooks}
+
+These hooks provide shell-specific utilities (with the same name as the hook) to patch shell scripts meant to be sourced by software users.
+
+The typical usage is to patch initialisation or [rc](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3467/what-does-rc-in-bashrc-stand-for) scripts inside `$out/bin` or `$out/etc`.
+Such scripts, when being sourced, would insert the binary locations of certain commands into `PATH`, modify other environment variables or run a series of start-up commands.
+When shipped from the upstream, they sometimes use commands that might not be available in the environment they are getting sourced in.
+
+The compatible shells for each hook are:
+
+ - `patchRcPathBash`: [Bash](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/), [ksh](http://www.kornshell.org/), [zsh](https://www.zsh.org/) and other shells supporting the Bash-like parameter expansions.
+ - `patchRcPathCsh`: Csh scripts, such as those targeting [tcsh](https://www.tcsh.org/).
+ - `patchRcPathFish`: [Fish](https://fishshell.com/) scripts.
+ - `patchRcPathPosix`: POSIX-conformant shells supporting the limited parameter expansions specified by the POSIX standard. Current implementation uses the parameter expansion `${foo-}` only.
+
+For each supported shell, it modifies the script with a `PATH` prefix that is later removed when the script ends.
+It allows nested patching, which guarantees that a patched script may source another patched script.
+
+Syntax to apply the utility to a script:
+
+```sh
+patchRcPath<shell> <file> <PATH-prefix>
+```
+
+Example usage:
+
+Given a package `foo` containing an init script `this-foo.fish` that depends on `coreutils`, `man` and `which`,
+patch the init script for users to source without having the above dependencies in their `PATH`:
+
+```nix
+{ lib, stdenv, patchRcPathFish}:
+stdenv.mkDerivation {
+
+  # ...
+
+  nativeBuildInputs = [
+    patchRcPathFish
+  ];
+
+  postFixup = ''
+    patchRcPathFish $out/bin/this-foo.fish ${lib.makeBinPath [ coreutils man which ]}
+  '';
+}
+```
+
+::: {.note}
+`patchRcPathCsh` and `patchRcPathPosix` implementation depends on `sed` to do the string processing.
+The others are in vanilla shell and have no third-party dependencies.
+:::