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Layering multiple environments

This guide walks you through creating a default $HOME environment and layering it with a project's path environment.

Create your default $HOME environment

First, let's set up your default environment. Use flox init in $HOME (or ~).

$ cd ~
$ flox init
✨ Created environment default (aarch64-darwin)

Next:
  $ flox search <package>    <- Search for a package
  $ flox install <package>   <- Install a package into an environment
  $ flox activate            <- Enter the environment

Now lets flox install tools that will be useful on any system regardless of the project. Here we are installing curl, gitFull, gnupg, inetutils, tree, and vim.

$ flox install curl gitFull gnupg inetutils tree vim
✅ 'curl' installed to environment default at /Users/youruser
✅ 'gitFull' installed to environment default at /Users/youruser
✅ 'gnupg' installed to environment default at /Users/youruser
✅ 'inetutils' installed to environment default at /Users/youruser
✅ 'tree' installed to environment default at /Users/youruser
✅ 'vim' installed to environment default at /Users/youruser

Let's inspect the contents of the environment with flox list:

$ flox list
curl: curl (8.4.0)
gitFull: gitFull (2.42.0)
gnupg: gnupg (2.4.1)
inetutils: inetutils (2.5)
tree: tree (2.1.1)
vim: vim (9.0.2116)

We can test the environment is working properly with flox activate.

$ flox activate
flox [default] $ which git
/Users/youruser/.flox/run/aarch64-darwin.default/bin/git
flox [default] $ git --version
git version 2.42.0

Everything is working!

Make your terminal always use the default $HOME environment

Now let's customize a zsh profile so the default environment is activated for every new shell.

Note

These steps will vary if you are using a different shell such as bash.

Edit your ~/.zshrc file using vim from the default environment.

flox [default] $ vim ~/.zshrc

Add the following line to the bottom of the file:

eval "$(flox activate --dir ~)"

Save and exit the file. Open a new terminal window and you should see the default environment is now active!

Last login: Tue Feb 13 10:13:12 on ttys013
flox [default] $

Layering a project environment

Now that we have our tools in the default environment we can layer on a new environment that brings in project-specific dependencies. For this example we will use a publicly accessible Node project called material-ui.

Let's clone the example project to our home directory and enter the project's directory:

flox [default] $ git clone https://github.com/mui/material-ui.git
Cloning into ...
flox [default] $ cd material-ui

Use flox init from the material-ui directory that we are in.

flox [default] $ flox init
✨ Created environment material-ui (aarch64-darwin)

Next:
  $ flox search <package>    <- Search for a package
  $ flox install <package>   <- Install a package into an environment
  $ flox activate            <- Enter the environment

This project only requires yarn so let's install it with flox install.

flox [default] $ flox install yarn
✅ 'yarn' installed to environment material-ui at /Users/youruser/material-ui

Now we're ready to do development on this project! Let's activate the material-ui Flox environment and start material-ui's development server.

flox [default] $ flox activate
flox [material-ui default] $ yarn start
...

We now have access to both the dependency this project needs (yarn) and the tools we need to do development on any project (vim, git, etc)! You can layer as many environments as you want. If two environments contain the same package, Flox will use the package from the last environment activated.

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