What is DevBox?¶

DevBox is a lightweight CLI tool that streamlines local development for teams working on multi-service projects. It provides a way to use a single source of truth for local development environment configuration, eliminating common setup and maintenance challenges.

Built on top of docker compose, DevBox enhances the standard functionality with powerful features designed to improve team productivity.

Introduction¶

Setting up and maintaining a local development environment for projects with multiple interconnected services can be challenging and time-consuming. DevBox helps teams maintain a single source of truth for their local development environment configuration, allowing everyone to focus on coding rather than troubleshooting environment issues.

Features¶

Automatic Updates¶

Ensures team-wide service configurations stay in sync. When services are added or configurations change, the latest version is immediately available for everyone.

Centralized Repository Control¶

Automatically fetches source code from stable branches of multiple repositories, eliminating manual version updates.

Selective Development¶

Develop specific services locally while others remain at their default (latest) version.

Smart Context Detection¶

Automatically detects your location in the local filesystem to infer which project or service you're working on:

Project Detection: Identifies the relevant DevBox project by matching Git remote URLs or checking local mounts
Service Detection: Determines which service you're working on based on directory structure and Git context

Predefined Scenarios¶

Provides scenarios for common tasks (e.g., running E2E tests) in a single configuration file, eliminating the need to learn service-specific commands.

Zero-Config SSL¶

Automatically generates and manages SSL certificates for local development.

Automatic Host File Updates¶

Manages your /etc/hosts file automatically — no manual editing required.