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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

#141

Post by d0mine »

the_duke wrote: post #43
mkenigs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flox employee here! To start off by addressing how this relates to nix tools: - Our goal is to be more user friendly. You don't have to learn the Nix expression language or understand nix internals to be successful. - We've been able to add some opinionation and polish. Some of that is subjective, but some examples are: - We have a hybrid imperative/declarative interface. You can `flox install && flox list`, and thos…

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.

It sounds like: "Dropbox is a small UX improvement over rsync"

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

#142

Post by altano »

tripdout wrote: post #77
jljljl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devbox can also run services too. Both products use an awesome process runner called process-compose ( https://github.com/f1bonacc1/process-compose/ ) which is worth checking out (it's even built with nix!)

I think the ability to run services is really what separates Devbox from other related Nix-based dev-env solutions. Essentially taking what you get from the NixOS-specific configuration.nix options (like for example `services.mediawiki.enable = true`) and letting that be per-project, per-directory, is super useful.

I think Devbox's killer feature is trivially searching for and installing packages by version: https://www.jetpack.io/blog/how-nixhub-searches-nixpkgs/

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

#143

Post by yencabulator »

peterldowns wrote: post #11

Hi 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…

> Crunchbase links to news articles that make it seem like you've raised $24MM.

Oh wow. I really don't see a way to a $2.4B exit here. Good luck!

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

#144

Post by xwowsersx »

gregwebs wrote: post #64

There 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…

I have used devbox and have been keeping an eye on other options. Haven't tried devenv yet. Any thoughts on devenv vs flox given what we're seeing here?

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

#145

Post by whateveracct »

jahsome wrote: post #73

The 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 used the repl from day 1 and it was so intuitive. No other alternative has a repl (besides guix I guess)

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

#146

Post by vhodges »

OJFord wrote: post #31
vhodges wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

I am no expert, but yes, it's flakes for my projects. It keeps the build time tooling separate (eg Go compiler, node version,etc) from the main system (so I could for example have different versions for different projects). It also makes it easier for others that might (one day) contribute to my projects to start developing (assuming they're using nix) with the same tooling and versions that I am using.

aiui, nix shell was the non-flake way of doing things and nix develop is for flakes (this is probably a gross over simplification!)

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

#147

Post by vhodges »

srid wrote: post #24
vhodges wrote: post #19

Earlier 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).

> this doesn't do services, but there was a flake util just announced that adds support for that You must be referring to services-flake: https://community.flake.parts/services-flake

yes, thanks!

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

#148

Post by amarshall »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #61
troymc wrote: post #57

I wonder if something like this could be used instead of conda or pixi to manage Python packages, the used-version of Python, the Python virtualenv, etc.

It can, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you have native dependencies that are just a pain to install. You'll loose Windows compatibility, may have to package some Python packages yourself, have a learning curve for everyone in the Python ecosystem and gain... what exactly?

I don’t use Flox, but do use Nix + poetry2nix for a few Python projects at work. It is a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes, but because it’s Nix, it’s never a pain till something is deliberately changed. The result is that our dev environments are way more reliable than before and project onboarding just works every time. We also use Nix to build for CI and production in these projects.

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

#149

Post by danhudlow »

lytedev wrote: post #140
danhudlow wrote: post #138

What I desperately want is the generation of a lock file so that environment installs are cryptographically guaranteed to be repeatable byte-for-byte. I recognize that this means either checksums every platform supported, but I’ve been startled that none of the options I’ve found seem to have the capacity for this.

I think you're looking for Nix flakes proper! This is one of the promises! Given so, this means many tools based on nix provide this too, though it's not as easily surfaced.

Unfortunately, neither nix flakes nor tools based on nix that don’t “easily surface” this feature provide the security guarantees I’m seeking, since security guarantees are a function of cryptographic proofs and abstractions that are comprehensible to an end user.

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

#150

Post by ronef »

Yanael wrote: post #62

Reproducible development environment, I'm very enthusiastic about it and have been using development containers for years now, at work, they do a great job too. About a year ago, I started to hear about Nix. I was super excited at first, the promise is amazing, but the onboarding process has been awful for me. I have a defined development environment I want to achieve, but it seems I always miss something in the way…

Thanks for asking! This is definitely a deeper lets get beers convo when you're in the bay! But - Have you ever seen the Microservices video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ

I was leading the developer products team at Facebook back then and started a project around injecting remote capabilities into local dev. Short of it was that thousands of developers were waiting 45 minutes for cold builds... Part of the initial steps for the project was to map out the entire SDLC (so we can get a sense of what parts of the toolchains we need to rebuild), that's where that video above comes into mind if you look at that whiteboard towards the end... Visualizing how complex we've made it is what got me into the headspace of - this can't actually be how we go about this.

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