Support nushell

[sandydoo]

Add built-in support for launching a nushell with devenv shell.

Current workarounds are to use direnv with the existing system shell or exec with devenv shell nu (may break PATH ordering).

[sebb3]

@sandydoo
are you saying that it already works by running devenv shell nu?
or is it similar experience as using the direnv way?

[sandydoo]

devenv shell nu

devenv shell nu launches a bash shell, evaluates the environment there and then execs into nu.

Cons:

• If your rcfile/profile (or whatever the nu equivalent is) touches PATH or other variables, then the load order will be incorrect. The system profile will take precendence.
• In devenv 2.0, commands passed to devenv shell are exec'd without launching an auto-reloading shell, so this approach is currently incompatible with that feature.

direnv

direnv evaluates the shell using bash and then layers the environment on top of the system shell.
This is currently the best experience.

Cons:

• Uses whichever shell the system uses
• No option to enter a more hermetic environment with your favourite shell (not leak system stuff).

[sebb3]

got it.

what would be really nice is of course if devenv shell could use nushell, and get the same hot-reload functionallity as bash, and also become a first-class citizen when new features are added.
nushell has some interesting features that could potentially be useful here, like overlays and modules...
my current setup is awesome but feels a little bit fragile just because ive seen in different threads that it is not officially supported (even though it works great for me...)

but i should also add that the direnv approach IS working quite well, the only thing missing for me (just because it exists for bash, never thought about it before :) ) is the 'rebuild silently in the background' part that bash seems to offer.

[Yethal]

As a current fulltime nushell user:
Integration via direnv works fine if we don't use the hot reload functionality as all configuration (env variables, scripts etc) is resolved correctly, it's only the hot reload that requires dropping to bash.

On a semi related note: given that both devenv and nushell are written in rust and that nix and nu are both functional languags with native support for structued data, perhaps a deeper integration of both ecosystems would be feasible. Instead of shelling out to nu binary devenv could run an embedded nu interpreter or pass configuration as nushell engine state instead of via env vars.