Devbox

Instant, easy, and predictable development environments

What is it?

Devboxis a command-line tool that lets you easily create isolated shells for development. You start by defining the list of packages required by your development environment, and devbox uses that definition to create an isolated environment just for your application.

In practice, Devbox works similar to a package manager likeyarn– except the packages it manages are at the operating-system level (the sort of thing you would normally install withbreworapt-get). With Devbox, you can install over400,000 package versionsfrom the Nix Package Registry

Devbox was originally developed byJetifyand is internally powered bynix.

Demo

You can try out Devbox in your browser using the button below:

The example below creates a development environment withpython 2.7andgo 1.18,even though those packages are not installed in the underlying machine:

Installing Devbox

Use the following install script to get the latest version of Devbox:

curl -fsSL https://get.jetify.com/devbox|bash

Read more on theDevbox docs.

Benefits

A consistent shell for everyone on the team

Declare the list of tools needed by your project via adevbox.jsonfile and rundevbox shell.Everyone working on the project gets a shell environment with the exact same version of those tools.

Try new tools without polluting your laptop

Development environments created by Devbox are isolated from everything else in your laptop. Is there a tool you want to try without making a mess? Add it to a Devbox shell, and remove it when you don't want it anymore – all while keeping your laptop pristine.

Don't sacrifice speed

Devbox can create isolated environments right on your laptop, without an extra-layer of virtualization slowing your file system or every command. When you're ready to ship, it'll turn it into an equivalent container – but not before.

Good-bye conflicting versions

Are you working on multiple projects, all of which need different versions of the same binary? Instead of attempting to install conflicting versions of the same binary on your laptop, create an isolated environment for each project, and use whatever version you want for each.

Take your environment with you

Devbox's dev environments areportable.We make it possible to declare your environment exactly once, and use that single definition in several different ways, including:

• A local shell created throughdevbox shell
• A devcontainer you can use with VSCode
• A Dockerfile so you can build a production image with the exact same tools you used for development.
• A remote development environment in the cloud that mirrors your local environment.

Quickstart: Fast, Deterministic Shell

In this quickstart we’ll create a development shell with specific tools installed. These tools will only be available when using this Devbox shell, ensuring we don’t pollute your machine.

1. Open a terminal in a new empty folder.

2. Initialize Devbox:

   devbox init

   This creates adevbox.jsonfile in the current directory. You should commit it to source control.

3. Add command-line tools from Nix. For example, to add Python 3.10:

   devbox add [email protected]

   Search for more packages onNixhub.io

4. Yourdevbox.jsonfile keeps track of the packages you've added, it should now look like this:

   {
   "packages":[
   "[email protected]"
   ]
   }

5. Start a new shell that has these tools installed:

   devbox shell

   You can tell you’re in a Devbox shell (and not your regular terminal) because the shell prompt changed.

6. Use your favorite tools.

   In this example we installed Python 3.10, so let’s use it.

   python --version

7. Your regular tools are also available including environment variables and config settings.

   git config --get user.name

8. To exit the Devbox shell and return to your regular shell:

   exit

Read more on theDevbox docs Quickstart.

Additional commands

devbox help- see all commands

See theCLI Referencefor the full list of commands.

Join our Developer Community

• Chat with us by joining theJetify Discord Server– we have a #devbox channel dedicated to this project.
• File bug reports and feature requests usingGithub Issues
• Follow us onJetify's Twitterfor product updates

Contributing

Devbox is an opensource project so contributions are always welcome. Please readour contributing guidebefore submitting pull requests.

Devbox development readme

Related Work

Thanks toNixfor providing isolated shells.

Translation

• Chinese
• Korean

License

This project is proudly open-source under theApache 2.0 License