devenv vs Laravel Herd
devenv
devenv.shLaravel Herd
herd.laravel.comSide by side
| Figure | devenv | Laravel Herd |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $8.25/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Development Environment Managers | 8.7 (#3) | 7.9 (#19) |
| Spec score · Development Environment Management Tools | 8.6 (#3) | 7.9 (#12) |
| Platform requirements | The homepage says devenv requires Nix and works on Linux, macOS, and WSL. | The macOS edition requires macOS 12.0 or higher; the maker says there are currently no plans for a Linux version. |
| Purpose | devenv lets teams declare development environments so developers and CI can use the same reproducible setup. | Herd is a native Laravel and PHP development environment for Windows and macOS. |
Plans
In their own words
devenv
devenv uses Nix to define development environments for teams and CI. A project configuration can specify packages, languages, services, tasks, secrets, variables, files, and shell scripts. The project lists 58 supported languages and 42 preconfigured services, including PostgreSQL, Redis, MySQL, RabbitMQ, and Elasticsearch. Processes can be supervised with dependencies and restarts, while tasks can run in parallel and integrate with shells or commits. SecretSpec can read declared secrets from sources such as Keychain, 1Password, LastPass, dotenv, and environment variables. devenv can build OCI containers and run integration tests with its processes active; documentation also describes GitHub Actions use for checks, builds, and tests. It requires Nix and works on Linux, macOS, and WSL. As of devenv 2.4, the project no longer builds, tests, or releases it for Intel Macs. Projects must be explicitly trusted before automatic activation. The software is free and MIT licensed, with GitHub and Discord linked for help and community. Cached shell startup is listed as under 100 ms after the first build; devenv Cloud is in private beta.
Laravel Herd
Laravel Herd has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.