Your Dev Environment, Everywhere
Every new tool or abstraction we add—containers, microservices, serverless—solves one problem but creates others. This is the story of how I discovered Nix, left behind the madness of endless layering, and learned to love a deterministic approach to building software.
The GitHub CLI gives you a way to perform most GitHub-related tasks in your terminal. Get it with a prebuilt Flox environment wired for transparent auth with GitHub.
You can create a Flox environment with built-in, transparent auth via a third-party secrets manager, giving you CLI workflows that work the same way everywhere—locally, in CI, and in prod.
Whether you are using Nix or Flox, tools like nix-du, nix-tree, and nix-top are so useful that you’re probably going to want to have them close at hand.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.16 release.
If you author shell scripts or create software that runs in a terminal, gum should probably be in your toolkit, especially if you’re building stuff for other people. You want what you build to look and feel good, right?
Think outside the box. People often say they don't use Nix because it solves the same problems that containerization does. This is a half truth. Nix specializes in packaging software, while containerization excels at deploying software. They're best when used together.
sshs is a clean, simple TUI tool that lets you visually scroll through your SSH connections—identifying, selecting and easily establishing just the connection you want.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.15 release.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.14 release.
Kelsey Hightower will be one of two dozen speakers beaming onto Planet Nix, the annual gathering of Nix users and developers that’s co-located with SCALE in Pasadena, Calif., from March 5th-7th.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.13 release.
Diskonaut is a terminal-based tool for visualizing disk usage as an interactive treemap, making it easier to identify large files and folders. Flox makes it easy to get and run.
Ever find yourself shelled into a remote server and you just want to grab a few files without all the scp-hopping? The sharing package is built for you.
Our Flox Ollama runtime environment now includes a popular React-based web front-end, so it looks and behaves like ChatGPT. You can pull and run DeepSeek R1—then prompt it from your browser.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.12 release.
In the real world, Flox environments and containers neatly complement one another. The real magic lies in using Flox inside containers to fetch and manage runtime dependencies at build time.
Described as a tool for working with large language models, repomix is useful for anyone working with AI or machine learning platforms that rely on structured text inputs for analysis or processing.
It is usually fairly easy to Floxify an existing project, including a public GitHub repo. And it’s just as easy to add helpful automations that bootstrap an environment or improve the user experience.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.11 release.
What does it look like to Floxify a software project? How much work is involved? How can you build locally using Flox and test in CI, or run in prod, using containers, VMs, or lambdas?
jrnl is a plain-text command-line journaling application that allows you to store multiple journals, tag entries, and more.
Kind is a lifesaver if or when you need to emulate a production Kubernete environment on your laptop. And with Flox, you can create and share a preconfigured kind environment that runs ... anywhere.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.10 release.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.9 release.
With Flox, you can easily replicate your preferred apps, tools, settings, and workflows across all your devices—including that brand new M4 MacBook Pro you’re getting for the holidays!
Byobu is a terminal tool you can use to split your screen, run multiple sessions, and reconnect to sessions, even after you log out or or disconnect. I’d call it a terminal multiplexer, but it isn’t, quite, because it stands on the shoulders of giants.
What does console emulation have to do with building, testing, and shipping software? The trick lies in creating a partially turn-key emulation environment that Just Works across OSs and CPU architectures. For Flox, this is its superpower!
Not everyone wants to install a resource-intensive container runtime on their local system, especially on desktop platforms like macOS and Windows.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.8 release.
Your teams need a reproducible, collaborative way to manage AWS secrets and authenticate with AWS services across disparate systems and environments? Fear not! Flox has got them covered.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.7 release.
Using Gource, you can get a unique sense for your project's history. It's this week's Fun Package Friday, and it delivers on the fun.
Your teams need a reproducible, collaborative way to manage AWS secrets and authenticate with AWS services across disparate systems and environments? Fear not! Flox has got them covered.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.6 release.
How to use Flox to install all the runtime dependencies you need to build and test your Lambda functions locally, and also containerize them for deployment to AWS Lambda.
bpftrace hooks into the eBPF runtime built into the Linux kernel to give you unparalleled insight into what's happening on your machine.
Flox lets you manage both your code and your project environment’s runtime dependencies in the same repository, so your environment’s configuration becomes part of your codebase.
Here is what you need to know about the new Flox v1.3.5 release.
Teams are held back by a combination of factors, starting with technical, architectural, and process decisions outside their control. They’re also frustrated by the unpredictability of things they should be able to control. With shared Flox environments, working on a team becomes a completely different experience.
Harlequin not only has an extremely pretty terminal UI, it’s got an oh-so-pretty terminal UX, too, with point-and-click mouse support, command-completion capabilities, and other goodies.
If you just want the facts and do not have time to read the release notes, here is what you need to know about the new release.
Think of nEMU as kind of like a TUI complement to virt-manager, just cooler and awesomer because you can run it in your favorite terminal emulator!
Onboarding onto something new is radically different when you use Flox to create and manage your dev environments.
Nix is more than just an accessory for chic designer Bellroy: it is a critical piece in its innovative software stack, making difficult things possible in a unique, valuable way.
Just in time for Halloween: Get a prebuilt Flox environment that runs anywhere for playing the shareware version of Doom. Or any of the Doom add-ons available in the Flox Catalog. Or any old-school DOS-based game!
broot has it all: Fast, intuitive file navigation, search, and management capabilities; built-in support for cp, rm, and other common commands; plus the ability to integrate with your Git workflow
Flox is designed for users of all kinds. It unlocks the potential of Nix without requiring in-depth knowledge of it, and gives Nix experts a great way to enable their teams.
zoxide is a fuzzy-matching directory-jumping tool that styles itself as a “smarter” replacement for cd. It also pairs nicely with our last fun package, fzf.
Use Flox, Weaviate, Ollama, and Verba to create a portable, reproducible RAG stack that Just Works—without VMs or containers.
Need to find just the right file—fast? Fzf filters search results dynamically as you type, enabling super-fast incremental search. It's a cinch to install and use in a workflow with Flox.
Flox’s superpower is reproducibility, so the Go dev environments you create on your Linux laptop will just work ... everywhere
Flox makes it trivially easy to create and share portable, reproducible Node.js development environments using simple declarative methods.
gh-dash is a visual, intuitive terminal-based tool you can use to manage GitHub pull requests, issues, and code reviews.
Jless is a big time-saver when you need to work with JSON and jq, and is just a generally helpful tool. Plus, you can build jless-powered workflows into Flox environments to automate all kinds of tasks.
By testing your environments as part of your CI workflows, you can guarantee they work the same way—everywhere. Plus, your CI workflows double as a structured, reliable process for testing and validating updates and changes.
With FloxHub, it’s easy to share and manage declarative Flox environments, making them available to all of your teammates. Even better, FloxHub provides a one-stop shop for changing your Flox environments.
Flox makes it trivially easy to create and share portable, reproducible Python development environments using simple declarative methods.
See how Flox makes it easy it is to set up a real-world Rust project, complete with external tools and dependencies, using a simple manifest that works everywhere you do.
Flox makes it simple to create portable, cross-platform dev environments, but sometimes you also need to work around system- and architecture-specific package constraints. This article shows you how.
When Ockam needed a scalable, sustainable solution for standardizing their build environment and improving reproducibility, they looked for a solution that would be simple to implement, scale, and maintain. They found it in Nix.
It’s even easier to build beefy services like PostgreSQL into your dev environments now that Flox does the setup, teardown, and runtime management lifting for you.
Flox Package Groups give you an easy way to manage dependency conflicts, enabling you to create powerful fit-for-purpose dev environments you can take with you—anywhere.
Learn how you can use Flox's [hook] and [profile] sections to build, customize, and share rich, reproducible development environments.
Having access to 1Password secrets in your Flox environments puts the world at your fingertips, but making it work everywhere you do takes a few simple tricks.
Using Flox simplifies Ruby development by making it much easier to manage system-level dependencies, providing a consistent and reproducible Ruby dev environment across all platforms and architectures.
Using Flakes in Flox give you more flexibility, allowing you to access or create unique package versions and custom configurations not available in Flox Catalog.
With Flox's new pre-built environment, you can pass prompts to Anthropic's Claude models and get on-point results right within your terminal.
With the Flox default environment, you can take your $HOME with you wherever you go...and keep your tooling consistent across systems and distros.
Using Flox, it is easy to create reproducible environments for ML training and inference using Hugging Face Diffusers. Our FLAIM environment gets you there in a single command.
With Flox, the set of packages you're using can change depending on the directory you are working in. Using direnv and Flox, environments can autoactivate so you can effortlessly navigate the different parts of your stack.
Flox environments aren't isolated; they layer upon one another, allowing you to combine them in endless ways while keeping your toolsets discrete.
Ollama is an amazing way to work with LLMs. Installing it isn't exactly hard...but adding it to your project's stack and sharing it with colleagues? That can be tricky unless you use Flox.
The Flox Catalog now contains over 3 years of history for each of its 100k packages, totaling over a million building blocks you can assemble however you like. Find everything you're looking for.
Adding the power of ChatGPT to your shell can make you more efficient, and it's easy with a Flox remote environment.
You can run containers using Podman and Flox without installiing any heavy desktop applications or starting daemons.
Using remote environments from FloxHub, you can start a Jupyter Notebook server on bare metal...without installing anything.
The third part of this series shows how you can clone environments, layer them, and share them.
The second part of this series explores the ways you can use Flox environments to adjust the way software is configured and run.
Flox makes it easy to create ephemeral environments and try new tools without making a mess all over your desk.
Flox CLI 1.0 and FloxHub is here! It's a good opportunity to reflect on our own experiences and the reasons we feel Flox is a part of the next generation of software development practices.
We caught up with Vova Kryachko from Project IDX and asked him to tell us how his team use Nix to deliver a flexible IDE experience in the cloud. Some of his answers may surprise you.
Nixcon 2023 in Darmstadt is a wrap! The team from flox was there, giving talks and having amazing conversations. In this post, find videos from our NixCon 2023 talks.
Christian Theune has been working in IT since the late-1990s, and his experience gives him a clear understanding of what it takes to maintain applications and systems over the long term. In this edition of Nix in the Wild, he shares how they use NixOS to support long-term customers.
In this latest edition, we had a chance to speak with Farid Zakaria from Google. He has a lot to say about motivating people to adopt new tools, and shared his story with us.
Sift Technologies specializes in human curation, offering trusted recommendations and facilitating recommendations from people to people. One of the tools they leverage in their work is Nix.
Graham's team focuses on high-performance computing, real-time trading, and full-stack development. Controlling configurations and ensuring reproducibility are critical aspects of their work, making Nix an ideal fit for their needs
In the world of software development, efficiency and scalability are paramount. Read how companies like Prisma are leading the way by using Nix to manage system dependencies and streamline projects.
If Rust seeks to solve the problem of memory management at the program level, Nix seeks to solve dependency management at the build level, for any language. The problems are analogous, and the solutions go hand in hand.
We're big fans of Nixpkgs (obviously) and encourage others to contribute packaging and review. Nixpkgs is surprisingly easy to contribute to, but has its particular details. This is a guide to contributing your first PR to Nixpkgs.
Anybody can view it, fork it, patch it, and use Nix to inspect the largest set of free software recipes in the world. People sometimes focus on Nix the language or Nix the package manager, but it's the Nixpkgs package collection that is core to the success of Nix.
Harness the power of Nix. Today we’re thrilled to release the flox CLI beta to the public as an open source project and announce a Series A funding round led by NEA.
GitHub changed the format of their archives and this unexpectedly caused some systems and services that depend on the hash of the archives of a source tree to break. Nix uses NAR hashes, a custom format for source archives; NAR hashes are deterministic based on the content of a source tree.
tired: year of the Linux desktop. wired: year of Nix everywhere. 2022 was a pivotal year for flox. We are delighted with the response towards the platform and CLI, and very grateful for the many fascinating conversations we had with users.
At NixCon 2022, flox Lead Engineer Tom Bereknyei (@tomberek) presented the mission behind flox. It was an important moment for us to share with the Nix community what we see as the problems we can solve, and how we intend to go about solving them.
Last week, the Nix community got together in person for the first time in 3 years, in Paris, for three days of presentations, discussion, and good times.
flox is a first-of-its-kind environment manager. Seamlessly create new polyglot developer environments. Make everything reproducible from package management to builds.
I absolutely love it when hard problems are solved by challenging convention, peeling back layer after layer until pinpointing the core assumption that led us down the wrong path in the first place.
