I wish I knew whether Devenv has a conflict of interest with the Nix project. On /r/NixOS on Reddit, some of the people involved in the project just spam submissions related to Devenv instead of helping the community. One instance: https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/194a4ln/comment/lnep...
This commenter is just wrong. denenv.nix pretty much is flake.nix + services. It has since grown more features, but this kind of use case is exactly its niche.
Devenv isn't a Nix fork and doesn't compete with Nix. Its scope is narrower and it's downstream of Nix. The code you write for configuring Devenv is ordinary Nix code. Its configuration system is a perfectly ordinary Nix module system.
There is a `devenv` CLI tool, and that CLI bundles a downstream soft fork of Nix that carries a few patches. Those patches exist to make it possible to read `devenv.nix` rather than `flake.nix` and use an easily programmatically editable yaml file for defining flake inputs. Other than that, all of the patches are just PRs that are open against mainline Nix that are included to speed up evaluation, notably the patchset for "lazy trees" or "source tree abstraction" (which is also in the Determinate Nix distribution or Nix).
But you can actually use the core features of Devenv (that is, the module system for configuring environments) without using the Devenv CLI or the patched evaluator. This isn't a hidden thing or a hack, either— it's documented on https://devenv.sh . It's always been this way, and isn't a paywall boundary or a trick. The whole of Devenv is open-source, and the vast majority of the code is Nix modules that you can use with any Nix implementation that you like (though flakes support makes it easier; Devenv's modules are exposed as flake-parts modules).
Hell, you can even use large subsets of devenv's functionality without using devenv at all. One of its key features is a Nix wrapper/integration for the pre-commit framework for managing git hooks. That whole subset of functionality is extremely loosely coupled to devenv, and lives in a separate repo. You can just import it as a flake-parts module with vanilla Nix without using devenv at all (i.e., not even the module system).
There's some code duplication with Nix (optional evaluator patches) and Nixpkgs (downstream release channel for guaranteeing integration with devenv's language configuration options, also optional (my team doesn't use it at all)), but it's extremely misleading to characterize Devenv as a fork of any Nix community projects including those two.
Just posting a link to the Devenv website is admittedly not a high-effort reply, but recommending Devenv is absolutely a fair reply to the post you linked.
PS: I'm not affiliated with devenv or Cachix. I just use it at work and know the code a little from times that I've filed bugs or submitted patches.
I have been doing this aspect manually, sometimes adding a flake.nix or using Devenv with flake.nix instead of devenv.nix.
If this can work well generally, it's a really slick integration. I'm really impressed with Devenv's velocity and usefulness overall.
If you haven't checked devenv out yet, you definitely should. Don't be intimidated by the breadth of the feature set, either! It's really easy to use just the bits you're interested in and grow your usage (or not) organically.
It’s a bloody shame that Linux is incapable of reliable running software programs without layers and layers of disparate, competing abstractions.
I’m increasingly convinced that the mere existence of a package manager (for programs, not source code) is a sign of a failed platform design. The fact that it exists at all is a miserable nightmare.
Flatpak and Snap tried to make this better. But they do too much which just introduced new problems.
Steam does not have this problem. Download game, play game. Software is not that complicated.
I wish I knew whether Devenv has a conflict of interest with the Nix project. On /r/NixOS on Reddit, some of the people involved in the project just spam submissions related to Devenv instead of helping the community. One instance: https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/194a4ln/comment/lnep...
tl;dr: no.
This commenter is just wrong. denenv.nix pretty much is flake.nix + services. It has since grown more features, but this kind of use case is exactly its niche.
Devenv isn't a Nix fork and doesn't compete with Nix. Its scope is narrower and it's downstream of Nix. The code you write for configuring Devenv is ordinary Nix code. Its configuration system is a perfectly ordinary Nix module system.
There is a `devenv` CLI tool, and that CLI bundles a downstream soft fork of Nix that carries a few patches. Those patches exist to make it possible to read `devenv.nix` rather than `flake.nix` and use an easily programmatically editable yaml file for defining flake inputs. Other than that, all of the patches are just PRs that are open against mainline Nix that are included to speed up evaluation, notably the patchset for "lazy trees" or "source tree abstraction" (which is also in the Determinate Nix distribution or Nix).
But you can actually use the core features of Devenv (that is, the module system for configuring environments) without using the Devenv CLI or the patched evaluator. This isn't a hidden thing or a hack, either— it's documented on https://devenv.sh . It's always been this way, and isn't a paywall boundary or a trick. The whole of Devenv is open-source, and the vast majority of the code is Nix modules that you can use with any Nix implementation that you like (though flakes support makes it easier; Devenv's modules are exposed as flake-parts modules).
Hell, you can even use large subsets of devenv's functionality without using devenv at all. One of its key features is a Nix wrapper/integration for the pre-commit framework for managing git hooks. That whole subset of functionality is extremely loosely coupled to devenv, and lives in a separate repo. You can just import it as a flake-parts module with vanilla Nix without using devenv at all (i.e., not even the module system).
There's some code duplication with Nix (optional evaluator patches) and Nixpkgs (downstream release channel for guaranteeing integration with devenv's language configuration options, also optional (my team doesn't use it at all)), but it's extremely misleading to characterize Devenv as a fork of any Nix community projects including those two.
Just posting a link to the Devenv website is admittedly not a high-effort reply, but recommending Devenv is absolutely a fair reply to the post you linked.
PS: I'm not affiliated with devenv or Cachix. I just use it at work and know the code a little from times that I've filed bugs or submitted patches.
I have been doing this aspect manually, sometimes adding a flake.nix or using Devenv with flake.nix instead of devenv.nix.
If this can work well generally, it's a really slick integration. I'm really impressed with Devenv's velocity and usefulness overall.
If you haven't checked devenv out yet, you definitely should. Don't be intimidated by the breadth of the feature set, either! It's really easy to use just the bits you're interested in and grow your usage (or not) organically.
It’s a bloody shame that Linux is incapable of reliable running software programs without layers and layers of disparate, competing abstractions.
I’m increasingly convinced that the mere existence of a package manager (for programs, not source code) is a sign of a failed platform design. The fact that it exists at all is a miserable nightmare.
Flatpak and Snap tried to make this better. But they do too much which just introduced new problems.
Steam does not have this problem. Download game, play game. Software is not that complicated.
Does it cache dependency crates to nix store? Does it result to speed-up in builds?
Yes, it does vendor all the crates to Nix store.
It results into speed up in a way that if your application doesn't change, you'll just get the binary package.
That's why the two interfaces are exposed: one for development feedback cycle and one for distribution.
how does it compare with the devbox project
We're aiming to take Nix to its most simple form, while devbox uses json for configuration.
Think of devenv as systemd of developer environments.
This post is talking about building your project with Nix, and only tangentially about dev environments à la devbox.