Feature request: devbox backend for access to nix packages

[W1M0R]

Mise has a great UX. When I need tools that are not available on the other backends or that have complex source compilation steps with many dependencies, I reach out to devbox since it has a vast package registry provided by the nix package manager ecosystem. This is very useful for CI environments.

One of the downsides of this approach is that team members have to shift from a mise mindset to a devbox/nix mindset when working on those parts of the system.

It would be great if we could stay in the mise world, but still benefit from packages defined in the devbox/nix ecosystem. The downside of a devbox backend is that it can not run on Windows due to the restrictions of Nix. From the perspective of mise, this could just be ignored on Windows systems (during a mise install for example).

A devbox backend would contribute about 400,000 packages to the non-Windows mise user base. Although some of these packages already exist on other backends and the true contribution is not known, it is still likely to be significant.

Devbox has a cli and uses a devbox.json for specifying versions.

As a mise-backend, it would be possible to add dnsmasq using something like:

[tools]
"devbox:dnsmasq" = "2.91"

The backend might manage a hidden devbox.json file, or the devbox cli with explicit arguments. Mise shims could call into the devbox cli to run the desired program.

Here is an example devbox.json file:

{
  "$schema":  "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jetify-com/devbox/0.14.2/.schema/devbox.schema.json",
  "packages": [
    "dnsmasq@2.91"
  ],
  "shell": {
    "init_hook": [
      "echo 'Welcome to devbox!' > /dev/null"
    ],
    "scripts": {
      "test": [
        "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
      ]
    }
  }
}

And here is how one would execute dnsmasq via the devbox cli:

devbox run dnsmasq --version

With mise it could be executed as:

# mise could create a shim that performs devbox run
dnsmasq --version

# mise could determine that dnsmasq uses the devbox backend and then perform devbox run
mise x -- dnsmasq --version

For a variation of this feature request that uses docker instead, see #5412.

For a variation of this feature request that uses pkgx instead, see #5416.

Related:

1. support nix environments #3538
2. feat: Nix backend. #4704
3. https://github.com/jbadeau/mise-nix

[jbadeau]

Please have a look at https://github.com/jbadeau/mise-nix. It should remove the need for devbox.

[W1M0R]

Thanks @jbadeau