What if you had a package.json for your entire development environment? That's dev.nix.

We use Nix in IDX so in one file you can declare the needed runtimes and tools and most importantly their versions. This file is checked into source so anyone contributing to the project has everything they need when the workstation boots up.

Let's dive in.

Learn how Project IDX allows you to enable Docker support with just one line of code so you can quickly and easily customize your workspace.

We use Nix at Project IDX to manage development environments. Nix is an open source environment manager that is fast, scalable, and deterministic. With Nix, there's no more "it works on my machine" problems. Nix may not be a tool you've heard of before, but it's been invaluable for us. In this interview I go into details about how we Nix to power IDX development environments, ensuring that everyone on the team is using the same tools and versions.

Project IDX is still in early development but we wanted to share a preview of it's current capabilities. We just posted a video that covers project creation, terminal commands, deployment, environment customization, and generative AI for coding tasks.