Show HN: Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers

Re:Show HN: Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers by figomore on Thursday August 25, 2022 @07:36PM (#32601429)

It seems to use [Nix](https://nixos.org). In Nix you can use [nix-shell](https://ghedam.at/15978/an-introduction-to-nix-shell) to create a shell with the packages you want. For instance, to create a new shell with Python-2.7:

``` $ nix-shell -p python27 ```

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Re:Show HN: Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers by dloreto on Thursday August 25, 2022 @07:40PM (#32601469)

Yes, internally it's using nix .. but it makes nix soooo much easier to use. With nix I've always struggled with the nix language and writing nix expressions.

If you are comfortable with nix itself, then it allows you to do a lot more than devbox does, but at the cost of extra complexity.

Depends on what level of abstraction you're looking for.

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Re:Show HN: Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers by pxc on Thursday August 25, 2022 @08:30PM (#32601858)

And happily, since this is a front-end rather than an incompatible fork or something, you don't have to choose!

If you wanted you could totally use this most of the time and then write custom Nix expressions only if you felt like that would serve you better. For many use cases, this might be sufficient.

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Re:Show HN: Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers by reddit_clone on Thursday August 25, 2022 @07:56PM (#32601599)

Not surprised. When I read the description I was thinking 'sounds like a job for Nix..'

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