In a lot of projects, this is usually done via README. It tells you what running dependencies to install and how to run certain commands.

This can get harder to maintain as things change, the project grows, and complexity increases.

I see two parts to automate here: actually setting up the environment, and running the application or orchestrating multiple apps.

How do you address this?

  • @abhibeckert
    9•1 year ago

    I use “Dev Containers” in Visual Studio Code.

    • Step 1 - open the root directory of your project in Visual Studio Code
    • Step 2 - say yes when prompted to launch the dev container
    • Step 3 - there is no Step 3.

    You do need to create various config files/etc, but it’s pretty straight forward and only needs to be done once for each project. Those config files are all kept in version control.

    The dev container setup generally matches the production system pretty closely. Depending on the project that ranges from dead simple to exceedingly complex with several servers all of which are built, configured and launched automatically when you open the project. If you need to change a container you just edit the config file and run a command to rebuild all of them. It’s surprisingly fast - thanks to caching at every step to avoid rebuilding the entire environment.