Earlier this month I mentioned on Mastodon that I was replacing a Docker-based local development environment at my day job with a Nix-based one, orchestrated with overmind and a justfile. There was quite a lot of interest in particular in how overmind and just could be used to replace a container / compose-based local development. While I can’t share the details of the significantly more complex migration I did at my day job (yet!

Some folks on the internet were interested in how I had managed to ditch Docker for local development. This is a slightly overdue write up on how I typically do things now with Nix, Overmind and Just.

  • uthredii@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I just see it as less practical than maintaining a toolchain for devs to use.

    There are definately some things preventing Nix adoption. What are the reasons you see it as less practical than the alternatives?

    What are alternative ways of maintaining a toolchain that achieves the same thing?

    • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I see it as less practical mainly due to the extant tooling and age/maturity of the project.

      The ways that I’m most familiar with are use of software like Artifactory - basically a multi-repo. Using such a tool, any package or artifact can be readily retained for future use. Then, for builds, one only needs to ensure that it is used as the package source, regardless of type (PyPy, Docker image, binary, RPM, etc).

      Alternatively, one can use individual repos for any relevant package type but that’s a bit more overhead to manage.