Show HN: ServBay – Native local dev environment (modern XAMPP)
servbay.com
I’m one of the creators of ServBay.
I built this because I got tired of the cognitive load required just to start coding. On my Mac, it was a fragile mix of Homebrew services and asdf conflicts. On Windows, managing PATH variables and fighting with Docker Desktop's resource usage was equally frustrating. I missed the simplicity of the MAMP/XAMPP era, but I needed to support modern stacks (Go, Rust, Node, etc.).
What it is: ServBay is a native local development environment for both macOS and Windows. It is not a wrapper around Docker or VMs. It bundles everything you need into a single, isolated ecosystem so it doesn't mess with your system libraries.
Key Features: - Multi-Version Stacks: Run Python, PHP,Node.js, Go and Rust and more simultaneously. No path conflicts. - Concurrent Databases: Run PostgreSQL 14 and 16 at the same time on different ports. Also supports MySQL, MariaDB, Redis, and MongoDB. - Automatic SSL: Generates valid certificates for local domains automatically. No more mkcert manual steps. - Built-in Tunneling: Expose localhost to the internet for webhook testing/demos.
Why not just use Docker (or WSL)? We use Docker for production. But for local dev, the file system sync latency and resource overhead can be overkill for day-to-day coding. ServBay is designed for when you just want to write code immediately without waiting for containers or virtual machines to spin up.
I’d love to hear your feedback on your current local workflow. I'll be here to answer any questions! Link: https://www.servbay.com