After a few months, I needed to do that again, but now the project supported devenv.sh. It took me 5 min.
That experience also repeated for other kinds of tasks, for example: start postgres (or redis or elasticsearch or cassandra...), install packages only if the host system is `darwin`, install old versions of packages that aren't on the registry anymore, etc...
I'm not really against tools that make it easier to use nix, I think devenv is a nice tool and I like that it doesn't hide nix, the same way I love home-manager and use it all the time.
Yep. That's my main argument for it against devbox.
> Does it have any kind of simpler syntax for overlays?
Yes, it does. But what helps isn't that, but the concise docs with just the information I need to know to get up and running quickly: https://devenv.sh/getting-started/
I've read multiple docs/books on Nix, but I always find myself lost when I need to accomplish anything simple. With devenv, I can spot most of my answers from the docs menu. They are all a single click distant from me.