webusb VS direnv

> WebUSB is actually a W3C open standard.

This is misleading at best. Here’s what the actual spec says <https://wicg.github.io/webusb/>:

> This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track.

It’s an experimental spec by Google (observe the affiliation of the three editors: all Google); Mozilla has adopted a negative position on it <https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webusb>; WebKit has not remarked upon it.

This is such a lame argument. You want it to be true but have no evidence that it actually is true.

A lot of the Chrome team's "standards" have problems with accessibility, workability on mobile, security[0], privacy[1], or just battery life. Some are neat experiments that are or only will be used in the wild by advertisers to track and identify users.

Because the Safari/WebKit team doesn't have to chase users for revenue like Mozilla does they can afford to be more conservative with what Google "standards" they support. Being able to offer a tighter privacy posture or efficiency is part of the iOS/macOS sales pitch.

[0] https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-t...

Limiting it to installed apps still has the problem of users blindly agreeing to something that is fundamentally super dangerous. I don’t believe installing PWAs currently exposes any new security surface, so this would be a significant change, and worse still a persistent hazard with probably no indication of what’s going on when it’s in use. I think there’s still potential in the general concept, but it’d take work and is certainly not ready yet in any browser.

Yes, certain classes are restricted from access via WebUSB for security, https://wicg.github.io/webusb/#protected-interface-classes. But as the note says, it’s about balance: that list is necessary for security, but not sufficient.

I think direnv already does a good job in this space, and it's already available in your package manager.

https://direnv.net/

I switched from asdf to mise after a comment on lobste.rs[1] suggested I do so a few months ago, and I have been very happy with it.

It sands off some of asdf's sharp UI edges and provides a somewhat larger but still reasonable feature set; I've also replaced most of my direnv[2] usage with it.

The mise -> asdf comparison page is useful[3]

1: https://lobste.rs/s/66uxbj/how_love_homebrew#c_mvmsjp

2: https://direnv.net/

3: https://mise.jdx.dev/dev-tools/comparison-to-asdf.html

I also made the export diff configurable, motivated by this post: https://github.com/direnv/direnv/pull/1233

Nice.

For years I've been using [direnv](https://direnv.net/) for this, setting environment variables which git picks up. This looks like a more feature complete equivalent, although to be honest I only really need switching of committer email and the SSH key used.

Direnv, for the uninitiated, loads and unloads environment variables when directories are entered and exited. Under every project folder there is a `$PROJ_DIR/.envrc` which contains:

buffer-env: A pure-Elisp version of the direnv utility. Useful to make Emacs aware of Python virtualenvs (which, judging by the questions posted here, is unfortunately still a complication for a lot of people). Similar to (and inspired by) envrc, but doesn't require the direnv program.

You can look at direnv to see this in action as they wrote shell hooks that get loaded into the shell profile and are executed on every prompt. https://direnv.net/

Yes, most Nix users employ https://direnv.net or the equivalent for your IDE of choice. Emacs for instance has https://github.com/purcell/envrc which set per-buffer variables.