Mise

Mise is the primary package and environment manager used in this dotfiles repository.

Overview

Mise features and advantages:

• Lightweight installation and faster bootstrapping
• Cross-platform compatibility
• Integrated task management
• Environment variable management
• Project-specific configurations
• Reduced disk space usage compared to Nix-based solutions

Configuration

Mise has been configured with some specific settings:

• Experimental features are enabled
• Lockfile is used to track exact versions
• Downloaded files are kept after installation
• Idiomatic version files are disabled (like ~/.python-version)

Shell Integration

Mise is integrated with the shell through activation and completion hooks. This replaces the previous direnv-based approach used with Devbox.

For activation performance optimizations during Bash startup, see Mise Caching Optimization.

Shell Aliases

Mise manages shell-independent aliases

Environment Variables

Mise handles environment variables that were previously managed by direnv. This is more efficient and centralizes the management of the environment.

Migration from Devbox

Aproach 1: Direct Migration

Packages can be migrated from Devbox to Mise using the following approach, which works for packages from Nixhub registry (backend used by Devbox) that are also in the Mise registry or in some of the backend registries supported by Mise:

1. Check if the package is available in Mise registry or Aqua registry
2. Use mise use -g package@version to add it to Mise
3. Remove it from Devbox with devbox global remove package

Some packages may need to remain in Devbox due to platform limitations:

• eza, aichat, and pnpm are examples of packages not available for macOS in the Mise registry

Devbox scripts can be migrated to Mise tasks by:

1. Converting single-line scripts to entries in config.toml
2. Converting multi-line scripts to task files with appropriate grouping
3. Replacing any references to devbox global run with mise run

Approach 2: Using Mise Backend Plugin mise-nix

mise-nix is a backend plugin that provides support for installing packages from Nixhub registry ("built for devbox by jetify") or from flakes as git links. It provides the same packaging source as Devbox, with the benefits of managing them with Mise, except for these current limitations:

• mise upgrade not supported for these packages. See the issue I opened, which the author found out to be actually a Mise bug, for which he opened a discussion.

Migration Scripts

Helper scripts available for migration:

• migrate-devbox-to-mise.sh: Migrates packages from Devbox to Mise, checking compatibility and availability
• migrate-devbox-scripts-to-mise.sh: Converts Devbox scripts to Mise tasks, handling both simple and complex scripts

Environments

Activated environments are managed by env var MISE_ENV as a comma-separated list. Implemented global environments are

• devbox: Packages using plugin backend mise-nix
• opt: Optional packages (heavy or rarely used)

Currently they are all activated by default. When declaring project environments locally, they must be appended to the value of activated global environments, else the latter would be deactivated inside the Mise-managed project. Example mise.local.toml:

[env]
MISE_ENV = "{{env.MISE_ENV}},prod,dev"

Environments take precedence over the base Mise environment, so to add a package to a config file higher in the directory hierarchy one has to either cd, use path option -p or, in the case of the global environment, clear the MISE_ENV value as in

MISE_ENV= mise use -g tlrc

Tasks

Integration with Usage

From Usage documentation,

Scripts can be used with the Usage CLI to display help, powerful arg parsing, and autocompletion in any language.

Tasks that specify their CLI with Usage don't need to have the usage runtime (or shebang #!/bin/usr/env -S usage bash for file tasks) for arg parsing, completion and tasks docs generation to work, since mise already integrates usage. This is convenient to prevent syntax highlighting, since the usage shebang breaks it. However, it is necessary for standalone Usage scripts not managed by mise directly as tasks.

Managing Multiple Versions of the Same Tool

Mise supports installing several versions of the same tool, with the latest taking precedence in activation hooks. The binaries of hidden versions can be accessed through mise which as shown in the example below:

$ mise which node --tool=node@23 --cd="$HOME"
/Users/user/.local/share/mise/installs/node/23.11.1/bin/node

$ mise which node --cd="$HOME"
/Users/user/.local/share/mise/installs/node/24.9.0/bin/node

Declare multiple installed versions of the same tool in ~/.config/mise/config.toml:

node = ["latest", "23"]

See all the installed versions (global declared and per-project):

: mise list|rg node
node                              19.9.0
node                              20.13.1
node                              22.19.0
node                              23.11.1                 ~/.config/mise/config.toml         23
node                              24.6.0
node                              24.7.0
node                              24.9.0                  ~/.config/mise/config.toml         latest

or

: mise tool node
Backend:            core:node
Installed Versions: 19.9.0 20.13.1 22.19.0 23.11.1 24.6.0 24.7.0 24.9.0
Active Version:     24.9.0
Requested Version:  latest
Config Source:      ~/.config/mise/config.toml
Tool Options:       [none]