Provided by: nix-bin_2.26.3+dfsg-1ubuntu4_amd64 
Name
nix profile - manage Nix profiles
Synopsis
nix profile [option…] subcommand
where subcommand is one of the following:
• nix profile diff-closures - show the closure difference between each version of a profile
• nix profile history - show all versions of a profile
• nix profile install - install a package into a profile
• nix profile list - list installed packages
• nix profile remove - remove packages from a profile
• nix profile rollback - roll back to the previous version or a specified version of a profile
• nix profile upgrade - upgrade packages using their most recent flake
• nix profile wipe-history - delete non-current versions of a profile
Description
nix profile allows you to create and manage Nix profiles. A Nix profile is a set of packages that can be
installed and upgraded independently from each other. Nix profiles are versioned, allowing them to be
rolled back easily.
Files
Profiles
A directory that contains links to profiles managed by nix-env and nix profile:
• $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/profiles for regular users
• $NIX_STATE_DIR/profiles/per-user/root if the user is root
A profile is a directory of symlinks to files in the Nix store.
Filesystem layout
Profiles are versioned as follows. When using a profile named path, path is a symlink to path-N-link,
where N is the version of the profile. In turn, path-N-link is a symlink to a path in the Nix store.
For example:
$ ls -l ~alice/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice users 14 Nov 25 14:35 /home/alice/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile -> profile-7-link
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice users 51 Oct 28 16:18 /home/alice/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile-5-link -> /nix/store/q69xad13ghpf7ir87h0b2gd28lafjj1j-profile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice users 51 Oct 29 13:20 /home/alice/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile-6-link -> /nix/store/6bvhpysd7vwz7k3b0pndn7ifi5xr32dg-profile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice users 51 Nov 25 14:35 /home/alice/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile-7-link -> /nix/store/mp0x6xnsg0b8qhswy6riqvimai4gm677-profile
Each of these symlinks is a root for the Nix garbage collector.
The contents of the store path corresponding to each version of the profile is a tree of symlinks to the
files of the installed packages, e.g.
$ ll -R ~eelco/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile-7-link/
/home/eelco/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile-7-link/:
total 20
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 bin
-r--r--r-- 2 root root 1402 Jan 1 1970 manifest.nix
dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 share
/home/eelco/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile-7-link/bin:
total 20
lrwxrwxrwx 5 root root 79 Jan 1 1970 chromium -> /nix/store/ijm5k0zqisvkdwjkc77mb9qzb35xfi4m-chromium-86.0.4240.111/bin/chromium
lrwxrwxrwx 7 root root 87 Jan 1 1970 spotify -> /nix/store/w9182874m1bl56smps3m5zjj36jhp3rn-spotify-1.1.26.501.gbe11e53b-15/bin/spotify
lrwxrwxrwx 3 root root 79 Jan 1 1970 zoom-us -> /nix/store/wbhg2ga8f3h87s9h5k0slxk0m81m4cxl-zoom-us-5.3.469451.0927/bin/zoom-us
/home/eelco/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile-7-link/share/applications:
total 12
lrwxrwxrwx 4 root root 120 Jan 1 1970 chromium-browser.desktop -> /nix/store/4cf803y4vzfm3gyk3vzhzb2327v0kl8a-chromium-unwrapped-86.0.4240.111/share/applications/chromium-browser.desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 7 root root 110 Jan 1 1970 spotify.desktop -> /nix/store/w9182874m1bl56smps3m5zjj36jhp3rn-spotify-1.1.26.501.gbe11e53b-15/share/applications/spotify.desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 3 root root 107 Jan 1 1970 us.zoom.Zoom.desktop -> /nix/store/wbhg2ga8f3h87s9h5k0slxk0m81m4cxl-zoom-us-5.3.469451.0927/share/applications/us.zoom.Zoom.desktop
…
Each profile version contains a manifest file: - manifest.nix used by nix-env. - manifest.json used by
nix profile (experimental).
User profile link
A symbolic link to the user’s current profile:
• ~/.nix-profile
• $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/profile if use-xdg-base-directories is set to true.
By default, this symlink points to:
• $XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/profiles/profile for regular users
• $NIX_STATE_DIR/profiles/per-user/root/profile for root
The PATH environment variable should include /bin subdirectory of the profile link (e.g. ~/.nix-
profile/bin) for the user environment to be visible to the user. The installer sets this up by default,
unless you enable use-xdg-base-directories.
Profile compatibility
Warning
Once you have used nix profile you can no longer use nix-env without first deleting
$XDG_STATE_HOME/nix/profiles/profile
Once you installed a package with nix profile, you get the following error message when using nix-env:
$ nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA 'hello'
error: nix-env
profile '/home/alice/.local/state/nix/profiles/profile' is incompatible with 'nix-env'; please use 'nix profile' instead
To migrate back to nix-env you can delete your current profile:
Warning
This will delete packages that have been installed before, so you may want to back up this
information before running the command.
$ rm -rf "${XDG_STATE_HOME-$HOME/.local/state}/nix/profiles/profile"
Options
Logging-related options
• --debug
Set the logging verbosity level to ‘debug’.
• --log-format format
Set the format of log output; one of raw, internal-json, bar or bar-with-logs.
• --print-build-logs / -L
Print full build logs on standard error.
• --quiet
Decrease the logging verbosity level.
• --verbose / -v
Increase the logging verbosity level.
Miscellaneous global options
• --help
Show usage information.
• --offline
Disable substituters and consider all previously downloaded files up-to-date.
• --option name value
Set the Nix configuration setting name to value (overriding nix.conf).
• --refresh
Consider all previously downloaded files out-of-date.
• --version
Show version information.
Note
See man nix.conf for overriding configuration settings with command line flags.
nix3-profile(1)