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Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

thottingal.in

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Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#1

Post by sthottingal »

A developer's machine accumulates tools fast. A Rust CLI you compiled last year, a Python formatter installed via `uv`, a language server pulled from npm, a terminal emulator from a curl script, a Go binary built from source. Each came from a different package manager, each with its own install incantation you half-remember.

I wanted a way to declare what I need without adopting a complex system like Nix or Ansible just for a single laptop. The result was a plain old Makefile.

I wrote a short post on using Make (along with a tiny bash script and fzf) to create a searchable, single-command registry for all your local dev tools. It’s not a new framework or a heavy tool—just a simple way to organize the package managers we already use.

If you're tired of losing track of your local environment, you might find it useful.

Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile
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Re: Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#3

Post by theowaway213456 »

Five years ago, I would've loved this. I love the simplicity and power of good old Make. And I obsess over my workstation's configuration. I used to have a massive bash script I would use to reprovision my workstation after every clean upgrade of Ubuntu.

But these days, I just tell codex to install things for me. I basically use it as a universal package manager. It's more reliable honestly than trying to keep up to date with "what's the current recommended way to install this package?"

I also have it keep a list of packages I have installed, which is synced to GitHub every time the list changes.

Re: Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#5

Post by bargainbin »

If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend Mise. It manages everything at the user level so it’s not as “all encompassing” as Nix and is readily compatible with immutable distros.

https://mise.jdx.dev/

Your solution is akin to putting your dotfiles in the code repo, which is going to cause issues with languages with poor version compatibility (such as node and python) when switching between old projects.

Also, bold of you to assume developers know make and bash just because they’re using Linux!

Re: Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#6

Post by Arthurian »

ekropotin wrote: post #2

I think you are re-inventing the wheel https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

I recently used clause code to help me learn nix + home-manager! For anyone considering it - it’s been fun, genuinely useful in my day to day, and I can’t recommend it enough - I now have a source controlled tool kit that I can take with me anywhere I go

Re: Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#7

Post by nemosaltat »

theowaway213456 wrote: post #3

Five years ago, I would've loved this. I love the simplicity and power of good old Make. And I obsess over my workstation's configuration. I used to have a massive bash script I would use to reprovision my workstation after every clean upgrade of Ubuntu. But these days, I just tell codex to install things for me. I basically use it as a universal package manager. It's more reliable honestly than trying to keep up to…

Just add the universal install script to AGENTS.md and yolo https://xkcd.com/1654/

Re: Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#8

Post by tpoacher »

theowaway213456 wrote: post #3

Five years ago, I would've loved this. I love the simplicity and power of good old Make. And I obsess over my workstation's configuration. I used to have a massive bash script I would use to reprovision my workstation after every clean upgrade of Ubuntu. But these days, I just tell codex to install things for me. I basically use it as a universal package manager. It's more reliable honestly than trying to keep up to…

Add the LLM to your makefile then :p

  target:
      llm command "Install X for me."
(PS. I don't even know if I'm joking anymore)

Re: Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#9

Post by ika »

ekropotin wrote: post #2

I think you are re-inventing the wheel https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

I agree. I started with Nix flakes in my project and fell in love with them. Then I started using Home Manager, and now I feel complete. I even played with nix-darwin and NixOS. It's an amazing piece of software.

Re: Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile

#10

Post by igor47 »

bargainbin wrote: post #5

If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend Mise. It manages everything at the user level so it’s not as “all encompassing” as Nix and is readily compatible with immutable distros. https://mise.jdx.dev/ Your solution is akin to putting your dotfiles in the code repo, which is going to cause issues with languages with poor version compatibility (such as node and python) when switching between old projects. Also, bold…

I cannot endorse mise more highly. I commit it to my repos to make sure every engineer has the same environment. I use it in CI for consistency there as well. I keep all commands that would normally be documented in a readme as mise tasks. I use mise to load the environment, independent of language specific tools like dotenv. I use a gitignored mise.local to put real creds into the environment for testing.
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