An empty nix-path in nix.conf will disable NIX_PATH environment variable entirely, which is not necessarily implied by users who want to disable nix channels. NIX_PATH also has some usages in tools like nixos-rebuild or just as user aliases. That change is surprising and debatable, and also caused breakages in nixpkgs-review and user configs. See: - https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/242098/files#r1269891427 - https://github.com/Mic92/nixpkgs-review/issues/343 - https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/10998 Co-authored-by: oxalica <oxalicc@pm.me>