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.

  • coehlEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    For this reason, we’re slowly integrating WSL2 usage onto the dev windows machines. I’m not saying that this refutes your last point, but it’s another thing to consider. This has, however, resulted in me learning to architect pretty gonzo level bash scripts when I’m accustomed to… more formal development. Lol.

    • JeezyOPEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      NixOS on WSL2 is actually my development environment of choice these days! (With my tiling window manager komorebi, of course! 😀)

      • coehlEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        Yep. That’s my personal open source project setup. I love nixos. It’s everything I like about dockerfile and a daily driver all rolled into one.

        Tall ask for the workplace with a bunch of windows only folks, though, unfortunately.

        Edit: I just realized you said nixos on WSL2. My bad. That’s freaking awesome, and that window manager is slick. Nice digs.

        I have to have to parity with our deployments in DevOps, where debian is preferred. It’s not the worst. But I think I’m going to make a separate distro for my own personal Linux work, like you did.

        I had to use Windows since I do research and development on our development team architecture. Gotta have parity there too. But that doesn’t mean I can’t cheat a bit like you, lol.