Apache Karaf with OSGi works pretty nice using annotation based dependency injection with the declarative services, removing the need to mess with those hopefully archaic XML blueprints. Too bad it's not as trendy as spring and the developers so many of the tutorials can be a bit dated and hard to find. Karaf also supports many other frameworks and programming models as well and there's even Red Hat supported... Source: about 3 years ago

Flox is the best thing I know of for articulating binary dependencies (language runtimes, etc.), which is probably the sweet spot for nix anyways at the moment. Flox uses nix for its backend, but has a simple TOML syntax and is properly humble about what it can do -- but killer at it -- as opposed to promising the world. https://flox.dev. - Source: Hacker News / 4 days ago

Nix and NixOS are in something like the state git was in before GitHub: the fundamental idea is based on more serious computer science than the status quo (SVN, Docker), the plumbing still has some issues but isn’t worse, and the porcelain and docs are just not there for mainstream adoption. I think that might have changed with the release of flox: https://flox.dev, it’s basically seamless (and that’s not... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago