To figure out what units need to be started/stopped/restarted/reloaded, the script first checks the current state of the system, similar to what systemctl list-units shows. For each of the units, the script goes through the following checks: Is the unit file still in the new system? If not, stop the service unless it sets X-StopOnRemoval in the [Unit] section to false. Is it a .target unit? If so, start it unless it sets RefuseManualStart in the [Unit] section to true or X-OnlyManualStart in the [Unit] section to true. Also stop the unit again unless it sets X-StopOnReconfiguration to false. Are the contents of the unit files different? They are compared by parsing them and comparing their contents. If they are different but only X-Reload-Triggers in the [Unit] section is changed, reload the unit. The NixOS module system allows setting these triggers with the option systemd.services.<name>.reloadTriggers. If the unit files differ in any way, the following actions are performed: .path and .slice units are ignored. There is no need to restart them since changes in their values are applied by systemd when systemd is reloaded. .mount units are reloaded. These mostly come from the /etc/fstab parser. .socket units are currently ignored. This is to be fixed at a later point. The rest of the units (mostly .service units) are then reloaded if X-ReloadIfChanged in the [Service] section is set to true (exposed via systemd.services.<name>.reloadIfChanged). If the reload flag is not set, some more flags decide if the unit is skipped. These flags are X-RestartIfChanged in the [Service] section (exposed via systemd.services.<name>.restartIfChanged), RefuseManualStop in the [Unit] section, and X-OnlyManualStart in the [Unit] section. The rest of the behavior is decided whether the unit has X-StopIfChanged in the [Service] section set (exposed via systemd.services.<name>.stopIfChanged). This is set to true by default and must be explicitly turned off if not wanted. If the flag is enabled, the unit is stopped and then started. If not, the unit is restarted. The goal of the flag is to make sure that the new unit never runs in the old environment which is still in place before the activation script is run. The last thing that is taken into account is whether the unit is a service and socket-activated. Due to a bug, this is currently only done when X-StopIfChanged is set. If the unit is socket-activated, the socket is stopped and started, and the service is stopped and to be started by socket activation.