devenv vs mise
devenv
devenv.sh
mise
mise.en.devSide by side
| Figure | devenv | mise |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Development Environment Management Tools | 8.6 (#3) | 7.5 (#21) |
| Configuration | A project can declare packages, languages, services, tasks, secrets, and tooling in its environment configuration. | A project's mise.toml can declare tools, environment variables, and tasks, while global configuration supplies personal defaults. |
| Integrations | The documentation includes integrations such as direnv, SecretSpec, GitHub CI, and an MCP server for AI assistants. | The documentation covers IDE integration and provides a GitHub Actions integration through mise-action. |
| Purpose | devenv lets teams declare development environments so developers and CI can use the same reproducible setup. | mise is a development environment setup tool that uses mise.toml to configure project tools, environments, and commands. |
| Security | Projects must be explicitly trusted before auto-activation, which the documentation describes as protection against untrusted projects modifying the shell. | The documentation describes safe mode as a way to prevent project configuration from executing code or injecting environment variables in supported operations. |
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.
mise
mise is a development environment setup tool for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Projects can use a mise.toml file to declare tools, environment variables, and tasks, while global configuration holds personal defaults. mise installs development tools and selects versions per project, supporting hundreds of tools. It can manage project environment variables and automatically activate Python virtual environments when entering projects. Developers can share tasks and run them when files change. Shell activation is documented for bash, zsh, fish, nushell, PowerShell, and other shells. Documentation covers IDE integration and CI examples for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Xcode Cloud. Safe mode can prevent project configuration from executing code or injecting environment variables in supported operations, though some backends require code execution and cannot resolve versions in that mode. The project advises reviewing other people's configuration because tasks, hooks, and some environment directives can execute code. mise is a free, open-source command-line tool under the MIT license.