We are starting to adopt devenv in our team. Overall it's really good--we have control over our toolchain, environment, and the processes that we start. There are some lingering papercuts though, like they haven't yet released a version where they allow specifying the Go toolchain version, and they seem to periodically re-download the Nix package archive. But I think they are improving fairly quickly.

Ultimately, we might still end up moving to straight Nix flakes, just not sure yet.

> they haven't yet released a version where they allow specifying the Go toolchain version

Devenv's maintainers are friendly and responsive when it comes to contributions from downstream, and like 90% of the devenv repo is plain ol' Nix code written in idioms that are common in the community.

I mention it because my team has hit some papercuts as well, but I've been really happy with how easy it's proven to address them. :)

I agree, the fix is in the main branch, they just haven't released it yet. It's just that the existing released versions just don't allow customizing the Go version because of some hardcoded assumptions in the Nix code. So I'll wait for the released version. I did say these are papercuts, not showstoppers ;-)

I'd be interested in anybody who has tried https://devenv.sh/ and https://www.jetify.com/devbox and chosen one over the other. Tried devbox which has been good, but not devenv.

Thanks that is useful

I briefly tried devenv and I find it much easier to use than raw nix, but I also had issues with my nix install on macos (using both the official and the DS installer). It worked well on my linux machine.

Today though mise has so many other great features, I would still choose it over devenv or devbox.

I've used Devbox for two years for my projects and any work I've done for my clients.

I'm curious what some of the mise features are you like.

I like Devbox and I'm familiar with its features so I'll just mention the extras the mise has.

The ubi backend means I can use nearly any binary published on GitHub without needing to worry about a flake or nixpkgs. Just get the binary directly from the author. Same for many of the other backends https://mise.jdx.dev/dev-tools/backends/.

Tasks are very powerful, they can use dependencies, flags, args, completions, and watches. Also can be defined either as strings in the config or point to shell scripts or even python/node/whatever scripts.

The shebang trick is very fun for writing portable shell scripts https://mise.jdx.dev/tips-and-tricks.html#shebang

The fact that mise doesn't depend on nix is both a blessing and a curse. I have less tools available and I don't have the power of a package manager, but on the flip side I don't need to deal with the idiosyncrasies of nix.

Thank you, TIL about ubi! My brain is now compiling a list of places where this will replace either a shell script or flake for my projects :).

Tasks sounds similar process-compose which is bundled into Devbox. I'll have to read up more on tasks though to see if that's an accurate assessment.

Nix is definitely a double-edged sword... One thing I like about Devbox is that it keeps Nix mostly (!) out of sight, mostly unless I want a binary from a GitHub release :).

FYI, ubi is just one of the backends. Besides many languages specific backends (cargo, go, ...), it has 3 backends that support generic packages - asdf, vfox and its own (core). Besides, the default backends are defined for many packages, so that you can let mise choose it for you.