mprweb VS lima

Debian has the MPR https://mpr.makedeb.org/

https://mpr.makedeb.org/ this is the link.

I know the MPR is a thing, but I've always found it unwieldy to use.

So the main difference from something like MPR is that it does that same thing, but for more packages, not only .deb files?

Regarding system repositores, it's generally best to avoid tampering with system repositories like this because it'll cause problems with release upgrades down the line. But if you really want to, look into https://mpr.makedeb.org/ with the expectation that a release upgrade with these packages installed will most likely fail.

makedeb - Like makepkg, but produces installable *.deb files. There are already lots of packages in the MPR

Actually exists! https://mpr.makedeb.org/

Mist is powered by the MPR, an AUR-like repository that's also for Debian and Ubuntu based systems (of which I'm also the project lead for, as well as the makedeb project listed below). In short, it uses pretty much the same PKGBUILD format that you'd see on Arch Linux, but uses them to build .deb packages instead of Arch Linux packages.

You can run a virtual machine (e.g. lima) from inside a nix-shell, exactly as you would do with a regular shell.

for others similarly curious, here's an example of the thing: https://github.com/noop-inc/template-java-spring-boot/blob/m...

they seem to be using the excellent lima <https://github.com/lima-vm/lima#readme> for booting on macOS; I run colima for its containerd and k8s support but strongly recommend both projects $(brew install lima colima)

Lima is what I use as well. It's quick and easy to just fire up a VM with default settings, but also very easy to configure with different file sharing options, port forwarding, different linux distributions, etc. (their examples are also pretty good IMO [1]).

In particular I use it to run an amd64 VM, which I need to run a stubborn service for work that doesn't run on arm CPUs.

[1] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/tree/master/examples

Lima (1) is a project that packages Linux distros for MacOS and executes them via qemu in the backend. Maybe you could solve your problem by launching one of their vms and inspecting the command line it generates. You might find an option you were missing.

(1) https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

If you wish to delve into all the configuration possibilities for Lima VM, you can visit this resource.

I'd say Lima and Colima should be enough for most use cases:

https://lima-vm.io/

https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

Github: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

Lima wraps QEMU in a simple CLI, with neat features for container users, such as filesystem sharing and automatic localhost port forwarding, as well as DNS and proxy propagation for enterprise networks. Rancher Desktop wraps Lima with k3s integration and GUI.

Talks: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/docs/talks.md