Hello simon; thank you for your input.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>&gt; The "incremental style" is a quick and dirty approach for creating a computational environment<div><br /></div><div><br /></div>If profiles are used, it can be exported to a manifest. <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>&gt; Guix is functional by design and we should not compromise on that.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div>I want to reiterate that I am not proposing anything less FP than profiles.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Nested shells do not fit my use case because a long running process started in shell "a" does not become aware of packages installed on shell "b".<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>&gt; thus this "transient" profile should be manipulated via "guix shell" and not "guix package"<div><br /></div><div><br /></div>I chose "guix install" for my proposal because it already has the functionality of adding a new generation. I do not think it would be good to change the semantics of nested shells.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>I failed to mention earlier that I like the name "--transient"