Congrats Ron! Glad to see you still at it!
Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
81–90 of 201 posts
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#82The line about nix making it easier for newcomers in the readme and similar statements always trigger me. I am quite a competent person and I've never once thought "that was easy" when trying to use nix. I adore the concepts of nix, but the user experience is awful. Maybe that's what this tool solves? It takes a frustrating amount of effort and incessant config tweaking with little to no documentation and navigating…
"Flox began its life during the deployment of Nix at the D. E. Shaw group, where it quickly proved invaluable by making Nix easier for newcomers".
Is that the line you are referring to? Sounds like the opposite of what you suggests it says.
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#83There are several tools in this space now- nix is maturing and people are realizing how useful nix can be for dev envs. * [devenv](devenv.sh) - I am using it and loving it, but worried that the development is not moving forward * [devbox](https://www.jetpack.io/devbox) * [daytona](https://www.daytona.io/docs/usage/workspaces/) * [devshell](https://github.com/numtide/devshell) * [bob.build](bob.build) more focused on…
> but worried that the development is not moving forward
There is an open v1.0 PR: https://github.com/cachix/devenv/pull/1005
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
or https://www.jetpack.io/devbox/ :ˆ)
Ah! The modern hell of choice. Can’t these peeps just work together and make one great thing instead of fragmenting over and over? I think I know the answers but have to ask anyway, hope to learn.
I guess it somewhat follows the Nix tradition of having several pieces of software doing the same exact thing and confusing the users about which one to pick.
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're referring to direnv as opposed to devenv.sh which does compete in the same space. Numentide was working on one too. I am using devenv.sh at work, at home I just nix develop (but this doesn't do services, but there was a flake util just announced that adds support for that I need to check out).
Why `nix develop`, not `nix shell` or `nix profile`? Because you're also packaging the final result with nix anyway or something? > nix develop starts a bash shell that provides an interactive build environment nearly identical to what Nix would use to build installable. Inside this shell, environment variables and shell functions are set up so that you can interactively and incrementally build your package. I'm not…
Nix shell is for devshells declared as a top-level in your flake. 99.99% of the time this is identical to the primary package, but sometimes having additional things around is helpful. E.g. I use justfiles for local dev (meaning I have to pull Just in as a dep), but that isn't something used for a real package build.
Nix profile is for activating profiles, which even a seasoned nix user would have little use for directly. It's what underpins home-manager as an example.
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#86Could we get user-global installs in ~/.local as a sort of default environment when no other environment is active?
I'm imagining a usecase as an alternative to `brew` but with the power of Nix.
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#87Could we get user-global installs in ~/.local as a sort of default environment when no other environment is active? I'm imagining a usecase as an alternative to `brew` but with the power of Nix.
Flox employee here, you can do that by creating an environment in your home directory and activating it in your `.bashrc` or `.zshrc` (we don’t support fish yet, but it’s on the roadmap). An environment created in your home directory is called `default` and your question is exactly its intended purpose.
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#88Hi Ron, congratulations on the release. My question is: how will you make money? I see you are the CEO, there is a company, and you have employees. Crunchbase links to news articles that make it seem like you've raised $24MM. Maybe I'm just missing it, but I can't see any pricing information on your landing page or in your docs. After I log in to FloxHub with my Github profile, I don't see any billing options. What i…
Appreciate the call out. Regarding pricing, bringing forward what you saw today for free and open source, was a major part of why I started Flox, with much more to come into it. What we released today will be free forever (both the open source client and the FloxHub services for sharing environments). We plan on expanding the offering to include a more robust private software catalogs that layers on top of the OOTB F…
Good luck! My experience of Nix, and similar "robust engineering" solutions like Bazel is that there are a handful of people that get it, and see the benefits. But there are hoards more that think you should just write hacky shell scripts and bugs don't really matter anyway.
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#89The line about nix making it easier for newcomers in the readme and similar statements always trigger me. I am quite a competent person and I've never once thought "that was easy" when trying to use nix. I adore the concepts of nix, but the user experience is awful. Maybe that's what this tool solves? It takes a frustrating amount of effort and incessant config tweaking with little to no documentation and navigating…
I read that as Flox makes nix easier for newcomers, not that nix is easy for newcomers.
Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
#90I saw some alternatives being suggested and wanted to do the same (Also, so that I can look back at this item, through my comments :) ). Started using https://pkgx.sh/ lately. I know it has some baggage with tea.xyz and crypto, but it is also easy to get started with.