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Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

corte.si

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Re: Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

#31

Post by amelius »

cortesi wrote: post #15
necubi wrote: post #13

I wrote something similar, called Slinky [0], which also transparently compiles various compiled web langauges (SASS, HAML, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, etc.). The issue with these systems is that they lie in between something like Python's SimpleHTTPServer and a complete frontend development tool like Grunt or Gulp. They're great for small projects, but have trouble scaling up. [0] https://github.com/mwylde/slinky

Slinky looks very neat! I do feel it inhabits a very different niche from devd, though. I have no ambitions for devd to compete with tools like Grunt, Gulp or Slinky. Devd has a simple job: it just serves files and triggers livereload when files change, and is completely agnostic about the build process. That means it works very well as a complement to Gulp - in fact, this is one of my primary use cases for devd. My…

While livereload is a very cool feature, I doubt that it brings a lot to the table in terms of functionality and user-friendliness. After all, web-users are accustomed to reloading a page when they want fresh results. What scenario do you have in mind where the use of livereload warrants the complications in the protocol?

Re: Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

#32

Post by PythonicAlpha »

This seems to be exactly what I needed for some of my projects. A simple application that can be used on my dev-system to be used as reverse-proxy for different servers.

Of course, I could use nginx, but fiddling with configuration files on dev-systems is not so cool. Also even nginx is not lightweight enough to me.

This looks really very neat! I will try it soon.

Thank you!

Re: Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

#33

Post by timblair »

amelius wrote: post #31
cortesi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slinky looks very neat! I do feel it inhabits a very different niche from devd, though. I have no ambitions for devd to compete with tools like Grunt, Gulp or Slinky. Devd has a simple job: it just serves files and triggers livereload when files change, and is completely agnostic about the build process. That means it works very well as a complement to Gulp - in fact, this is one of my primary use cases for devd. My…

While livereload is a very cool feature, I doubt that it brings a lot to the table in terms of functionality and user-friendliness. After all, web-users are accustomed to reloading a page when they want fresh results. What scenario do you have in mind where the use of livereload warrants the complications in the protocol?

I think you're confusing the who the "user" is in this case. It's not Joe Bloggs out on the internet who wants to see fresh content on your site; it's you, the web developer, working on your local machine, building a web site or application.

The live-reload functionality is there as a development workflow tool, to automatically reload the page to see the results of the latest code change, rather than manually switching to the browser and hitting ⌘R/F5.

Re: Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

#34

Post by Touche »

I don't understand why developers like these small web server tools that you have to remember to start on every project you work with. Setting up Apache or Nginx is harder but you have to do it 1 time ever and then you're done. Just server your entire dev folder and be done with it, never have to worry about static file serving again.

Re: Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

#35

Post by falcolas »

Touche wrote: post #34

I don't understand why developers like these small web server tools that you have to remember to start on every project you work with. Setting up Apache or Nginx is harder but you have to do it 1 time ever and then you're done. Just server your entire dev folder and be done with it, never have to worry about static file serving again.

I have never known Apache or Nginx to offer live reloading of changed assets. Sure, it only removes 4-5 keystrokes from your workflow, but if I were developing assets live, I could certainly see the value in my changes appearing live in a second window.

The simple (multi-endpoint) reverse proxying is certainly a nice-to-have when developing as well.

Re: Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

#36

Post by cortesi »

mcrider wrote: post #30
cortesi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slinky looks very neat! I do feel it inhabits a very different niche from devd, though. I have no ambitions for devd to compete with tools like Grunt, Gulp or Slinky. Devd has a simple job: it just serves files and triggers livereload when files change, and is completely agnostic about the build process. That means it works very well as a complement to Gulp - in fact, this is one of my primary use cases for devd. My…

Do you have an example gulpfile that uses devd? I've had a lot of trouble getting connect + nodemon to work well together and would love a better solution.

Devd doesn't appear in my gulpfiles at all, actually. Gulp literally just renders to disk. I then start devd separately with the appropriate livereload flags to handle the service end of things.

For instance, here's a devd command-line from the docs (https://github.com/cortesi/devd) that handles proxying local services, with a static directory overlaid. Gulp would be rendering assets into that static directory, the change would be noticed by devd, and liverload would be triggered.

  devd -l \
  -w ./src/ \
  /=http://localhost:8888 \
  /api/=http://localhost:8889 \
  /static/=./assets

Re: Devd: a small, self-contained web daemon for developers

#37

Post by teh_klev »

nikolay wrote: post #11
teh_klev wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It started as a weekend stress-relief hack " "This isn't terribly surprising, since I wrote it to scratch my own idiosyncratic itch" This is hacker news remember.

How can I forget, right? Hackers unite.

Yes we should.

Technically OP should have prefixed with "Show HN:" which is what it is perhaps.

Not all "Show HN:" posts exhibit brilliance or originality or solve a problem or as in this case solve a problem for the OP for which there is already an outstanding solution (I guess originality), but the existing solution doesn't fit their use-case.

And you know as hackers (I still am at 48 yrs old) if there's an itch needing to be scratched why not show off a bit of code, it's one of the best things about HN, we learn so much from each other this way, either through (constructive) criticism or just looking at a nice bunch of code.

So, yes, hackers unite.

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