Ask HN: Multi-Project Dev Setup

I have become fed up with my current dev set-up. It feels like I am constantly installing services with different versions and dependencies on my machine for different projects, and it just feels like a mess.

Some of the tools I use have version managers, which are mostly good, but you still end up restricted with some shared lib or other.

I have been using docker for a while, and it gets 90% of the way there, allowing me to easily spawn a complete environment for each project using docker-compose - but the actual development experience is left wanting. Complexities around attaching debuggers, laggy watchers, poor attached volume filesystem performance, slow build times, lack of access to my GPU, etc. There are ways around some of this, but its always time consuming to get set up - and then you get bitten by something else.

I am wondering if there is a better way to handle all this - where I can just 'check-out' an overlay or something that will give me a "native" per-project experience. I used btrfs snapshots for something similar a few years ago.

How does your development environment look? Any thoughts on tooling that can give me my dream setup?