Devbox

Instant, easy, and predictable development environments

License: Apache 2.0

What is it?

Devbox is 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 like yarn – except the
packages it manages are at the operating-system level (the sort of thing you
would normally install with brew or apt-get). With Devbox, you can install
over 400,000 package versions from the Nix Package
Registry

Devbox was originally developed by Jetify and is
internally powered by nix.

Demo

The example below creates a development environment with python 3.10 and
go 1.18, even though those packages are not installed in the underlying
machine. You can run commands in the environment with devbox run, or start an
interactive shell in it with devbox shell:

screen cast

Installing Devbox

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

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

Benefits

A consistent shell for everyone on the team

Declare the list of tools needed by your project via a devbox.json file and
run devbox 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.

Goodbye 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 are portable. We make it possible to declare your
environment exactly once, and use that single definition in several different
ways, including:

A local shell created through devbox 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.

Open a terminal in a new empty folder.
Initialize Devbox:
```
bash
devbox init
```
This creates a devbox.json file in the current directory. You should commit
it to source control.
Add command-line tools from Nix. For example, to add Python 3.10:
```
bash
devbox add python@3.10
```
Search for more packages on Nixhub.io
Your devbox.json file keeps track of the packages you've added, it should
now look like this:
```
json
{
  "packages": [
    "python@3.10"
  ]
}
```
Start a new shell that has these tools installed:
```
bash
devbox shell
```
You can tell you're in a Devbox shell (and not your regular terminal) because
the shell prompt changed.
Use your favorite tools.

In this example we installed Python 3.10, so let's use it.
```
bash
python --version
```
Your regular tools are also available including environment variables and
config settings.
```
bash
git config --get user.name
```
To exit the Devbox shell and return to your regular shell:
```
bash
exit
```

Read more on the
Devbox docs Quickstart.

Additional commands

devbox help - see all commands

See the
CLI Reference for
the full list of commands.

Join our Developer Community

Chat with us by joining the Jetify Discord Server
– we have a #devbox channel dedicated to this project.
File bug reports and feature requests using
Github Issues
Follow us on Jetify's Twitter for product
updates