Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I want to be able to use a build environment for a project listing the dependencies on the command line without creating a flake.nix

It can be quite cumbersome working with a flake.nix that you don't want to contribute upstream due to https://discourse.nixos.org/t/locally-excluding-nix-flakes-when-using-nix-independenly-of-upstream/16480.

Describe the solution you'd like

We can create a shell with all a list of packages using nix shell nixpkgs#<package1> nixpkgs#<package2>....

However doing this doesn't seem to set up a build environment (environment variables etc).
I believe it's more an application-level environment.
It would be nice to be able to use nix develop with a list of packages.
But, perhaps this isn't feasible if the build environment is tightly coupled with the derivation.

Describe alternatives you've considered

nix shell could have an option to create a build environment from a list of packages.