[Mathnerd314]

> despite it being a very useful tool, its setup requires investing time and getting over the Nix ecosystem's learning curve.

They mention Nix but I guess they are referring to the use_nix integration built-in to direnv? There is a fairly detailed (but old) comparison in https://github.com/direnv/direnv/wiki/Nix#some-factors-to-co... and in the meantime lorri and nix-direnv are the only ones still maintained. But you aren't limited to Nix when using direnv, for example there is nvm. https://github.com/direnv/direnv/wiki/Node#using-nvm

Actually, the post's solution, besides being built on top of direnv, uses Devbox, which itself is built on top of Nix... https://www.jetify.com/devbox/docs/faq/#how-does-devbox-work So they are saying they are outside the Nix ecosystem when in fact they are in it. It is yet another set of nice scripts on top of Nix.

[dudus]

This seems to be mostly a thin wrapper with a nice interface around nix-shell. Replaces Nix (the language) with this random json format inspired by node package.js. Keeps Nix packages.

[a1445c8b]

Maybe they meant to reference nix-direnv?