make falls back to the GNU toolchain when clang is absent, and that works for
the kernel. It does not work for the UEFI loader: BOOTX64.EFI is PE/COFF and
wants clang plus lld-link, so a machine with only gcc gets a kernel that builds
and a loader that silently stays whatever it already was.
That is not hypothetical -- it is what left a stale boot splash on this tree for
half a day. The mask in include/logo.h was the new mark, the kernel drew it, and
the loader kept drawing one compiled months earlier because nothing could relink
it and nothing said so.
shell.nix declares everything docs/guides/building.md lists, and building.md
gains a NixOS section saying why using it matters rather than just how.
Verified: with clang 21.1.8 and LLD 21.1.8 the loader relinks and the splash
draws Shift in metal, screendumped from the framebuffer rather than inferred.
Pinned to the host's nixpkgs rather than a flake input, deliberately. This is a
convenience for a development machine, not a reproducibility claim; if it ever
needs to be the latter it wants a flake and should say so.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VQ7Qx8E1q1M1bbCq8QLHS2
