nix-channel 1 Nix nix-channel manage Nix channels nix-channel --add url name --remove url --list --update A Nix channel is mechanism that allows you to automatically stay up-to-date with a set of pre-built Nix expressions. A Nix channel is just a URL that points to a place containing a set of Nix expressions and a nix-push manifest. See also . This command has the following operations: --add url [name] Adds a channel named name with URL url to the list of subscribed channels. If name is omitted, it defaults to the last component of url, with the suffixes -stable or -unstable removed. --remove name Removes the channel named name from the list of subscribed channels. --list Prints the names and URLs of all subscribed channels on standard output. --update Downloads the Nix expressions of all subscribed channels, makes them the default for nix-env operations (by symlinking them from the directory ~/.nix-defexpr), and performs a nix-pull on the manifests of all channels to make pre-built binaries available. Note that --add does not automatically perform an update. The list of subscribed channels is stored in ~/.nix-channels. A channel consists of two elements: a bzipped Tar archive containing the Nix expressions, and a manifest created by nix-push. These must be stored under url/nixexprs.tar.bz2 and url/MANIFEST, respectively. To subscribe to the Nixpkgs channel and install the GNU Hello package: $ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/releases/nixpkgs/channels/nixpkgs-unstable $ nix-channel --update $ nix-env -iA nixpkgs.hello