{"slug": "devbox", "name": "Devbox", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 3.944, "rising": -1.31, "first": "2025-12-14", "latest": "2026-06-11", "why": "I recently discovered devbox which is a wrapper around nix. It works really well as a package manager.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I recently discovered devbox which is a wrapper around nix. It works really well as a package manager.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "jetify.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.jetify.com/devbox", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Devbox", "devbox", "Dev Box"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 775941408, "item_id": 48496338, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496338", "by": "vhanda", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I now use Devbox [0] as it hides all the complexity of Nix while still giving all the benefits.", "excerpt": "Nix has a high learning curve. I now use Devbox [0] as it hides all the complexity of Nix while still giving all the benefits. Now I install far more packages via devbox (or devbox global) than I do via HomeBrew (on osx) or pacman (on arch). [0] - https://www.jetify.com/devbox", "context": "", "use_case": "dev environments and packages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 763174177, "item_id": 47698386, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698386", "by": "buu700", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "thought it looked like a nice abstraction", "excerpt": "I don't know about jujutsu, but I've actually found that Nix removes a lot of complexity. It's essentially just npm for tooling, although can be a bit more complex in practice due to the flexibility of the flake format and some quirks around how Nix handles caching by default. If you aren't a big fan of raw Nix, you might want to check out Devbox. I haven't used it myself, but found it recently and thought it looked ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code"}, {"id": 760197856, "item_id": 47512366, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512366", "by": "sanderwebs", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently discovered devbox which is a wrapper around nix. It works really well as a package manager.", "excerpt": "I've found brew so painful that I switched to nix. Nix unfortunately is painful in its own way. However, I recently discovered devbox which is a wrapper around nix. It works really well as a package manager. Just run \"devbox global add <package>\"", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "Nix", "story": "Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew"}, {"id": 757598321, "item_id": 47349895, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47349895", "by": "bryanlarsen", "date": "2026-03-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "use `devbox` and similar tools instead.", "excerpt": "I used nvm a long time and was very happy to get rid of it and use `devbox` and similar tools instead. The rule on my machine now is that everything has to be in a per-project sandbox, self-contained to ~/.local/bin or installed by the system package manager. The question was about global tools, something nvm purposefully does not handle. The `uv tool` answer by a sibling comment was great; it'd be nice to have somet", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "nvm", "story": "Show HN: A context-aware permission guard for Claude Code"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["dev environments and packages", "package manager", "sandboxing project environments", "remote dev machines"], "compared": [{"slug": "nix", "name": "Nix", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "homebrew", "name": "Homebrew", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 753869328, "item_id": 47116833, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47116833", "by": "locusofself", "date": "2026-02-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it made it so we have a lot more capable machines to do development on than the laptops", "excerpt": "I realize this does nothing to solve your problem, but for the sake of discusion, internally at Microsoft, pretty much all the developers I know have switched to using \"Devbox\", which means we use a remote desktop client to access our dev machine. A lot of us resisted this at first, but then just kindof came to accept it, and it made it so we have a lot more capable machines to do development on than the laptops that", "context": "developer at Microsoft", "use_case": "remote dev machine", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Chromebook Leads for K-8 School In Need?"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47343927", "title": "Show HN: A context-aware permission guard for Claude Code", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47113936", "title": "Ask HN: Chromebook Leads for K-8 School In Need?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48490024", "title": "Homebrew 6.0.0", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687273", "title": "The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47501211", "title": "Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202624", "title": "Dagger: Define software delivery workflows and dev environments", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"compare": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 775941408, "item_id": 48496338, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496338", "by": "vhanda", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I now use Devbox [0] as it hides all the complexity of Nix while still giving all the benefits.", "excerpt": "Nix has a high learning curve. I now use Devbox [0] as it hides all the complexity of Nix while still giving all the benefits. Now I install far more packages via devbox (or devbox global) than I do via HomeBrew (on osx) or pacman (on arch). [0] - https://www.jetify.com/devbox", "context": "", "use_case": "dev environments and packages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 763174177, "item_id": 47698386, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698386", "by": "buu700", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "thought it looked like a nice abstraction", "excerpt": "I don't know about jujutsu, but I've actually found that Nix removes a lot of complexity. It's essentially just npm for tooling, although can be a bit more complex in practice due to the flexibility of the flake format and some quirks around how Nix handles caching by default. If you aren't a big fan of raw Nix, you might want to check out Devbox. I haven't used it myself, but found it recently and thought it looked ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code"}, {"id": 760197856, "item_id": 47512366, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47512366", "by": "sanderwebs", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recently discovered devbox which is a wrapper around nix. It works really well as a package manager.", "excerpt": "I've found brew so painful that I switched to nix. Nix unfortunately is painful in its own way. However, I recently discovered devbox which is a wrapper around nix. It works really well as a package manager. Just run \"devbox global add <package>\"", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "Nix", "story": "Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew"}, {"id": 757598321, "item_id": 47349895, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47349895", "by": "bryanlarsen", "date": "2026-03-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "use `devbox` and similar tools instead.", "excerpt": "I used nvm a long time and was very happy to get rid of it and use `devbox` and similar tools instead. The rule on my machine now is that everything has to be in a per-project sandbox, self-contained to ~/.local/bin or installed by the system package manager. The question was about global tools, something nvm purposefully does not handle. The `uv tool` answer by a sibling comment was great; it'd be nice to have somet", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "nvm", "story": "Show HN: A context-aware permission guard for Claude Code"}, {"id": 757530032, "item_id": 47345627, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47345627", "by": "bryanlarsen", "date": "2026-03-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "sandboxed to specific projects using a tool like devbox, nix-devshell, docker or vagrant", "excerpt": "How do people install stuff like this? So many tools these days use `npm install` or `pip install`. I certainly have npm and pip installed but they're sandboxed to specific projects using a tool like devbox, nix-devshell, docker or vagrant (in order of age). And they'll be wildly different versions. To be pedantic `pip` is available globally but it throws the sensible `error: externally-managed-environment` I'm sure ", "context": "", "use_case": "sandboxing project environments", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: A context-aware permission guard for Claude Code"}, {"id": 753891136, "item_id": 47118196, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118196", "by": "exikyut", "date": "2026-02-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Curious if there's a way random people can test it.", "excerpt": "Devbox seems to be semi-public, and/or offered to customers: https://devbox.microsoft.com/ Curious if there's a way random people can test it.", "context": "", "use_case": "Remote dev machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Chromebook Leads for K-8 School In Need?"}, {"id": 740251617, "item_id": 46265726, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46265726", "by": "techn00", "date": "2025-12-14", "stance": "compare", "quote": "like devcontainers or https://www.jetify.com/docs/devbox/quickstart", "excerpt": "The title says \"dev environments\". Can dagger be used for creatin dev environments, like devcontainers or https://www.jetify.com/docs/devbox/quickstart ?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dagger: Define software delivery workflows and dev environments"}]}