Show HN: Endor, run server software in your browser
Setting up development environments is hard. We are building Endor to change that. Point your web browser to Endor.dev, select the components your app needs and hit "Launch". Seconds later it is up and running and you can deploy your code, either from a local folder or directly from your repository.
Everything is executed inside the browser and private by default. When you are done, just delete the browser tab and you are done! It can't get easier than that.
A typical web development stack has many moving parts, including databases, key-value stores, web and API servers, language runtimes and of course the code itself. The components are likely a mixture of containers, manual installations and the odd virtual machine. Setting them up and maintaining them over time is tricky and frustrating, especially if you are part of a team.
We already worked on this problem once with Bitnami (https://bitnami.com/), which Daniel cofounded and I was the frontend lead for. Bitnami packaged OSS applications so they could be deployed with one-click in multiple environments, from local installers to local VMs to all the major clouds and Kubernetes. Bitnami is used by millions of developers around the world and is a fantastic way to get started with any of the hundreds of applications in its catalog. Some of our early users described Bitnami as a "magical experience".
This time, we are looking to capture that feeling of magic by making it trivial to run any server component (including Bitnami ones!) in the browser, whether it is a Redis container, a MySQL VM or a specially compiled PHP binary. It really can't get simpler than following a link. Nothing to install, completely isolated so it doesn't mess with your existing setup, yet easy to use and share with others.
This initial version is still missing important features but is already quite useful for quickly launching a sandbox to test an OSS project you just ran across or run code you got from an AI. Over the coming weeks and months we will be adding significant functionality around networking, persisting data, performance and adding many more applications. We are building Endor to make our life as developers easier. We hope you find it useful too.
Give it a try!