This is why I decided to learn Nix. I built dev environment flakes that provision the devshell for any language I intend to use. I actually won’t even bother unless I can get something working reliably with Nix. ;)
For example, here’s a flake that I use for my Python dev environment to provide all needed wiring and setup for an interactive Python web scraper I built:
{
description = "Interactive Web Scraper";
inputs = {
nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs?ref=nixpkgs-unstable";
utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
};
outputs = { self, nixpkgs, utils }: utils.lib.eachSystem ["x86_64-linux"] (system: let
pkgs = import nixpkgs { system = system; };
in rec {
packages = {
pyinputplus = pkgs.python3Packages.buildPythonPackage rec {
pname = "pyinputplus";
version = "0.2.12";
src = pkgs.fetchPypi {
inherit pname version;
sha256 = "sha256-YOUR_SHA256_HASH_HERE";
};
};
pythonEnv =
pkgs.python3.withPackages (ps: with ps; [ webdriver-manager openpyxl pandas requests beautifulsoup4 websocket-client selenium packages.pyinputplus ]);
};
devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
buildInputs = [
pkgs.chromium
pkgs.undetected-chromedriver
packages.pythonEnv
];
shellHook = ''
export PATH=${pkgs.chromium}/bin:${pkgs.undetected-chromedriver}/bin:$PATH
'';
};
});
}
It feels like magic. I think of it as the glue that makes almost all of my software work together seamlessly. I can’t wait to use it for one-click deployments of my software on a server or high-availability cluster.