I’m wondering if you have any clever productivity hacks for switching between different projects, managing infrastructure services, secrets, tools, versions etc.
I’m wondering if you have any clever productivity hacks for switching between different projects, managing infrastructure services, secrets, tools, versions etc.
It's written in Go with no dependencies (or database). My intention was for an AWS image or something companies could run inhouse air-gapped from the Internet. Something like $10/m or so.
The cli is pretty easy to integrate with scripts: https://github.com/thisdougb/doocot
Longer term secrets were something I was looking at too. Pretty easy to extend this, but encroaches on Vault products and I felt that a harder sell to CTOs.
I've worked in infra/systems dev for years, and this sort of thing was bread and butter stuff.
Maybe I'll resurect it as an active project. What sort of feature/tool would get you to stop using Discord/Slack/etc for secrets?
An integrated solution for the whole environment. I pick a project, it opens the IDE, sets environment variables, fires up other services/infrastructure, lets me select secrets (that might be shared between projects), lets me share secrets (with other people)... Probably something like tilt, but simpler, integrated into an IDE, and with support for secrets.
There's a VSCode extension for Hashi Vault: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=owenfarr... for secrets management, but it's complicated because Vault is complicated.
A secrets extensions for my backend app would be quite easy though, I think. It's just re-implementing the cli tool.
From the IDE command palatte you could:
- Settings.backend_host = private Doocot backend || public backend
- Settings.username = (automatic)
- Settings.identity = (automatic) something like ssh key data
- Share.Individual = "select from list of identities on backend"
- Share.Group = "select from list of groups I am in"
- Share.Link = "store secret and return a valid one-time url for a non-dev"
- Read.SharedSecrets = "list secrets shared to me or my groups"
Then it'd just be some thought into the simplest way to setup and maintain groups.
You've piqued my interest in it again though, as it doesn't seem much extra work to do the above. Given the backend more or less does most of it already.
Although it's not the full environment integrated solution you're looking for, I think one step forward in terms of how we share secrets is still useful.
Thanks
(1) someone always pays
Immediately reminded me of this (which I am no where near clever enough to use):
Add some scripting at the start to close windows/programs that might be sticking around from other projects, and now you can switch between projects with a lot less friction.
I always try to automate this because you get situations where you e.g. want to quickly fix a typo in a project, run tests, and push a commit, but because you fumbled on some dev step you forgot to do, you burn 15 mins figuring out why the dev environment won't start.
If it's something I'm going to need most of the time when I open that project type then I automate it from bash scripts using simple identifiers like whether a go.mod, package.json, *.sln, etc exist. If you want to get even fancier then you could make scripts specific to each repo with a fallback, or make it search the existing sessions and close out any competing ones that would use the same ports or images. It's one of those things that does truly save 30 seconds multiple times a day, with minimal setup time for new projects once you know how you always structure your dev environment.
Infrastructure I put into a docker compose file, everything gets a non-default port to coexist, .env.local is preconfigured with relevant addresses.
Databases I use Sequelize migration and seeder scripts to create and populate.
bobbyraduloff•7mo ago
It’s peak startup opsec.
sebst•7mo ago