Migration from v1

Guide: Migrating from v1 (Bash CLI) to v2 (Go CLI)

ɳSelf v1 was a Bash-based CLI. v2 is a complete Go rewrite with a new configuration format, Docker naming conventions, and improved safety. This guide walks you through the upgrade process.

For a summary of breaking changes, see Upgrading-from-v1.

Before You Begin

Back up your data. The migration command does this automatically, but run a manual dump first:
Terminal window
```
# On your v1 installation
nself db dump
```
Know your current .env values, especially POSTGRES_PASSWORD, HASURA_GRAPHQL_ADMIN_SECRET, and HASURA_JWT_KEY.

Breaking Changes

v1 Env Var	v2 Equivalent	Notes
`NHOST_SUBDOMAIN`	`PROJECT_NAME`	Required
`NHOST_REGION`	(removed)	No cloud regions in v2
`NHOST_BACKEND_URL`	`BASE_DOMAIN`	Domain only, not full URL
`STORAGE_ENABLED`	`MINIO_ENABLED`
`S3_BUCKET`	`MINIO_DEFAULT_BUCKET`
`S3_ACCESS_KEY`	`MINIO_ACCESS_KEY`
`S3_SECRET_KEY`	`MINIO_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY`
`AUTH_SMTP_HOST`	`SMTP_HOST`
`GRAPHQL_JWT_SECRET`	`HASURA_GRAPHQL_JWT_SECRET`
`NHOST_ENV`	`ENV`	Normalised: `development` → `dev`

Docker resource names also changed:

Resource	v1 Pattern	v2 Pattern
Network	`nself{project}`	`{project}_default`
Container	`nself{project}_{service}`	`{project}_{service}_1`
Volume	`nself{project}_{service}`	`{project}_{service}`

Migration Steps

1. Install ɳSelf v1.0.0 (Go rewrite)

brew upgrade nself-org/nself/nself
nself version    # should show v1.0.x

2. Run the migration command

Navigate to your project directory:

cd /path/to/my-project

# Dry run first, shows what will change without modifying anything
nself migrate run --dry-run

# Run migration with automatic backup
nself migrate run --backup

The migration command:

Detects the v1 installation
Creates a backup at ~/.nself/migration-backups/{timestamp}/
Stops v1 containers
Maps v1 env vars to v2 format
Runs nself build to generate v2 configs
Renames the Docker network
Starts v2 services
Verifies health

3. Verify

nself health     # all services should be healthy
nself urls       # confirm URLs are correct

Rollback

If anything goes wrong, roll back to v1 using the backup created in step 2:

nself migrate list                           # list available backups
nself migrate rollback --to-backup 20260328120000

Rollback restores your .env files, docker-compose.yml, and project state, then restarts v1 containers.