doc/manual/source/command-ref/nix-store/delete.md
nix-store --delete - delete store paths
nix-store --delete [--ignore-liveness] paths…
The operation --delete deletes the store paths paths from the Nix
store, but only if it is safe to do so; that is, when the path is not
reachable from a root of the garbage collector. This means that you can
only delete paths that would also be deleted by nix-store --gc. Thus,
--delete is a more targeted version of --gc.
With the option --ignore-liveness, reachability from the roots is
ignored. However, the path still won’t be deleted if there are other
paths in the store that refer to it (i.e., depend on it).
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$ nix-store --delete /nix/store/gjak3al7lj61x4gj6rln4f5pc5v0f67n-mesa-6.4
0 bytes freed (0.00 MiB)
error: cannot delete path `/nix/store/gjak3al7lj61x4gj6rln4f5pc5v0f67n-mesa-6.4' since it is still alive