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Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

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Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#121
post #118

I tried devbox and some other tool in that field. I then tried dev containers. Dev containers won. Hands down.

They're nice, but they lock you into vscode

There are more and more tools making use of the dev containers spec: https://devcontainers.github.io/supporting.html

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#122
post #120
post #118

I tried devbox and some other tool in that field. I then tried dev containers. Dev containers won. Hands down.

You don't need to choose :). You can use Devcontainers with most of the Nix tools, including Devbox. See https://containers.dev/supporting

I just gave that link to someone else who commented here. :)

You are right, but at the end of the day, I prefer to write my own installation scripts or "features" than dealing with Nix.

Maybe some day I'll go back to a nix tool to help writing a complex devcontainer.json with everything I need.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#125
post #122
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to choose :). You can use Devcontainers with most of the Nix tools, including Devbox. See https://containers.dev/supporting

I just gave that link to someone else who commented here. :) You are right, but at the end of the day, I prefer to write my own installation scripts or "features" than dealing with Nix. Maybe some day I'll go back to a nix tool to help writing a complex devcontainer.json with everything I need.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39697259

"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

#126
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just gave that link to someone else who commented here. :) You are right, but at the end of the day, I prefer to write my own installation scripts or "features" than dealing with Nix. Maybe some day I'll go back to a nix tool to help writing a complex devcontainer.json with everything I need.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39697259 "But there are hoards more that think you should just write hacky shell scripts and bugs don't really matter anyway."

The link doesn't open on my side.

Yeah, I am aware writing my own scripts isn't ideal, but this is the current state of affair.

I could use mise to install most tools though. I would need to figure out what the overhead would be.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#128

How does nix deal with different CPU architectures? If I have some developers using an ARM based macbook, and some devs on an x86_64 based machine, is it easy to support both without much maintenance?

The Nix binary cache does x86_64-linux, aarch64-linux, x86_64-darwin, aarch64-darwin and maybe others. Every single package is different, but built from the same source. You won't be sharing binary cache even for python or other interpreted things since they depend on "stdenv" which contains bash.

But in practice it's really easy. Though if you're all into robustness you should probably test on the same arch you deploy to eventually.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are offering here is essentially a small UX improvement over sharing a flake with a devshell in a Git repo? I'm the first to admit that nix is way too cumbersome to use, but this alone doesn't seem like enough value add.

If you think this is a "small" improvement on Nix's UX you clearly have never used Nix.

Or they've used it so much that they no longer have to think about stepping around Nix's UX quirks. Once the habit is automatic a lot of the UX difficulties that can be striking at first become invisible, or at least forgettable.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#130

Last I tried to use Nix there was lots of confusion over flakes - some tutorials suggested using them and others saying they are still in development. Has the situation improved?

I believe so, it seems like almost all (or all?) solutions listed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39696038 use flakes underneath.

I think the flakes problem come from two things:

- flakes are labelled experimental for years now (I think it might be almost 5 years now) which creates confusion with new users, but they are universally used nearly everywhere now - there seems to be some bad blood[1] between https://determinate.systems/ company and the long time Nix users and developers who are accusing them that they are using Nix for their benefit with not contributing back. From my understanding Determinate Systems introduced flakes and probably this why there's some resistance to it by some.

But to answer your question, pretty much everyone adopted flakes and guides that don't use them are most likely old.

[1] https://discourse.nixos.org/t/introducing-flakehub/32044

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