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+<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
+      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
+      xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
+      version="5.0"
+      xml:id="sec-profiles">
+
+<title>Profiles</title>
+
+<para>Profiles and user environments are Nix’s mechanism for
+implementing the ability to allow different users to have different
+configurations, and to do atomic upgrades and rollbacks.  To
+understand how they work, it’s useful to know a bit about how Nix
+works.  In Nix, packages are stored in unique locations in the
+<emphasis>Nix store</emphasis> (typically,
+<filename>/nix/store</filename>).  For instance, a particular version
+of the Subversion package might be stored in a directory
+<filename>/nix/store/dpmvp969yhdqs7lm2r1a3gng7pyq6vy4-subversion-1.1.3/</filename>,
+while another version might be stored in
+<filename>/nix/store/5mq2jcn36ldlmh93yj1n8s9c95pj7c5s-subversion-1.1.2</filename>.
+The long strings prefixed to the directory names are cryptographic
+hashes<footnote><para>160-bit truncations of SHA-256 hashes encoded in
+a base-32 notation, to be precise.</para></footnote> of
+<emphasis>all</emphasis> inputs involved in building the package —
+sources, dependencies, compiler flags, and so on.  So if two
+packages differ in any way, they end up in different locations in
+the file system, so they don’t interfere with each other.  <xref
+linkend='fig-user-environments' /> shows a part of a typical Nix
+store.</para>
+
+<figure xml:id='fig-user-environments'><title>User environments</title>
+  <mediaobject>
+    <imageobject>
+      <imagedata fileref='figures/user-environments.png' format='PNG' />
+    </imageobject>
+  </mediaobject>
+</figure>
+
+<para>Of course, you wouldn’t want to type
+
+<screen>
+$ /nix/store/dpmvp969yhdq...-subversion-1.1.3/bin/svn</screen>
+
+every time you want to run Subversion.  Of course we could set up the
+<envar>PATH</envar> environment variable to include the
+<filename>bin</filename> directory of every package we want to use,
+but this is not very convenient since changing <envar>PATH</envar>
+doesn’t take effect for already existing processes.  The solution Nix
+uses is to create directory trees of symlinks to
+<emphasis>activated</emphasis> packages.  These are called
+<emphasis>user environments</emphasis> and they are packages
+themselves (though automatically generated by
+<command>nix-env</command>), so they too reside in the Nix store.  For
+instance, in <xref linkend='fig-user-environments' /> the user
+environment <filename>/nix/store/0c1p5z4kda11...-user-env</filename>
+contains a symlink to just Subversion 1.1.2 (arrows in the figure
+indicate symlinks).  This would be what we would obtain if we had done
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -i subversion</screen>
+
+on a set of Nix expressions that contained Subversion 1.1.2.</para>
+
+<para>This doesn’t in itself solve the problem, of course; you
+wouldn’t want to type
+<filename>/nix/store/0c1p5z4kda11...-user-env/bin/svn</filename>
+either.  That’s why there are symlinks outside of the store that point
+to the user environments in the store; for instance, the symlinks
+<filename>default-42-link</filename> and
+<filename>default-43-link</filename> in the example.  These are called
+<emphasis>generations</emphasis> since every time you perform a
+<command>nix-env</command> operation, a new user environment is
+generated based on the current one.  For instance, generation 43 was
+created from generation 42 when we did
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -i subversion mozilla</screen>
+
+on a set of Nix expressions that contained Mozilla and a new version
+of Subversion.</para>
+
+<para>Generations are grouped together into
+<emphasis>profiles</emphasis> so that different users don’t interfere
+with each other if they don’t want to.  For example:
+
+<screen>
+$ ls -l /nix/var/nix/profiles/
+...
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default-42-link -> /nix/store/0c1p5z4kda11...-user-env
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default-43-link -> /nix/store/3aw2pdyx2jfc...-user-env
+lrwxrwxrwx  1 eelco ... default -> default-43-link</screen>
+
+This shows a profile called <filename>default</filename>.  The file
+<filename>default</filename> itself is actually a symlink that points
+to the current generation.  When we do a <command>nix-env</command>
+operation, a new user environment and generation link are created
+based on the current one, and finally the <filename>default</filename>
+symlink is made to point at the new generation.  This last step is
+atomic on Unix, which explains how we can do atomic upgrades.  (Note
+that the building/installing of new packages doesn’t interfere in
+any way with old packages, since they are stored in different
+locations in the Nix store.)</para>
+
+<para>If you find that you want to undo a <command>nix-env</command>
+operation, you can just do
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --rollback</screen>
+
+which will just make the current generation link point at the previous
+link.  E.g., <filename>default</filename> would be made to point at
+<filename>default-42-link</filename>.  You can also switch to a
+specific generation:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --switch-generation 43</screen>
+
+which in this example would roll forward to generation 43 again.  You
+can also see all available generations:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --list-generations</screen></para>
+
+<para>Actually, there is another level of indirection not shown in the
+figure above.  You generally wouldn’t have
+<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/<replaceable>some-profile</replaceable>/bin</filename>
+in your <envar>PATH</envar>.  Rather, there is a symlink
+<filename>~/.nix-profile</filename> that points to your current
+profile.  This means that you should put
+<filename>~/.nix-profile/bin</filename> in your <envar>PATH</envar>
+(and indeed, that’s what the initialisation script
+<filename>/nix/etc/profile.d/nix.sh</filename> does).  This makes it
+easier to switch to a different profile.  You can do that using the
+command <command>nix-env --switch-profile</command>:
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env --switch-profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/my-profile
+
+$ nix-env --switch-profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/default</screen>
+
+These commands switch to the <filename>my-profile</filename> and
+default profile, respectively.  If the profile doesn’t exist, it will
+be created automatically.  You should be careful about storing a
+profile in another location than the <filename>profiles</filename>
+directory, since otherwise it might not be used as a root of the
+garbage collector (see <xref linkend='sec-garbage-collection'
+/>).</para>
+
+<para>All <command>nix-env</command> operations work on the profile
+pointed to by <command>~/.nix-profile</command>, but you can override
+this using the <option>--profile</option> option (abbreviation
+<option>-p</option>):
+
+<screen>
+$ nix-env -p /nix/var/nix/profiles/other-profile -i subversion</screen>
+
+This will <emphasis>not</emphasis> change the
+<command>~/.nix-profile</command> symlink.</para>
+
+</chapter>
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