Developer environments you can take with you

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Flox is a virtual environment and package manager all in one. With Flox you create environments that layer and replace dependencies just where it matters, making them portable across the full software lifecycle.

Install packages from the biggest open source repository (nixpkgs) that contains more than 80.000 packages.

With flox you can:
→ Create environments
→ Share your environments with others
→ Build container images
→ ... and much more

⚡️ Quick start

$ flox init           # <- Create an environment in current directory ✨.

$ flox search hello   # <- Search for a package 🚀.

$ flox install hello  # <- Install packages into current directory's environment 🔨.

$ flox activate       # <- Enter the current directory's environment 🎆.

flox [my-project] $ hello   # <- Have fun 🎉.
Hello world!

flox [my-project] $ exit    # <- Exit environment 💃.

❓ Why

We all build software on top of a dynamic set of tools, frameworks and packages, allowing us to move quickly and only build what’s necessary. However, each new wave of dev tooling innovation results in an entirely new set of dependencies that need to be managed. What starts as a simple app or microservice quickly grows complex, and turns into a expanding and fragmented supply chain. Flox brings reproducibility and consistency to complex software development lifecycles.

📘 Origins

Flox began its life during the deployment of Nix at the D. E. Shaw group, where it quickly proved invaluable by making Nix easier for newcomers and offering centralized control over packages. As a result, their successful project became one of the largest, most impactful enterprise deployments of Nix.

📫 Have a question? Want to chat? Ran into a problem?

We are happy to welcome you to our Discourse forum and answer your questions! You can always reach out to us directly via the Flox twitter account or chat with us directly on Slack.

🤝 Found a bug? Missing a specific feature?

Feel free to file a new issue with a respective title and description on the flox/flox repository. If you already found a solution to your problem, we would love to review your pull request!

⭐️ Contribute

We welcome contributions to this project. Please read the Contributor guide first.

🪪 License

The Flox CLI is licensed under the GPLv2. See LICENSE.