Docker / DevBox as a Service

[dacort]

I often would benefit from having a remote Docker host with faster network and CPU access. Alternatively, for a more complete environment, it would sometimes be nice to be able to SSH in to a full dev box or use it as a remote VS Code environment. Unfortunately, doing so requires running an instance somewhere 24/7.

It would be nice to have a serverless Docker/DevBox that can spin up and down on demand and maintain state between sessions.

I've done something similar before with terraform and cdk, but they don't scale to zero.

[dacort]

https://twitter.com/bernhardsson/status/1543074570512617475?s=20&t=HGrXozJ33qSFQX1pg-JMgA

Resources from that thread:

• GCP auto-suspend
• brev.dev?
• gitpod
• devbox
• fade
• coder

[dacort]

https://twitter.com/benbjohnson/status/1559261165594689536?s=21&t=XNzEjJG2IBibCiUFQyQy7Q

[dacort]

Got the DNS -> EC2 start working with a simple Lambda. It's sometimes slow, though (e.g. 1 minute) which is unfortunate. Even when the instance is hibernated.

[dacort]

https://www.uber.com/en-US/blog/devpod-improving-developer-productivity-at-uber/

[dacort]

I proactively don't use remote environments because access is so annoying. Wonder how fast Firecracker can resume. Could use Tailscale as a backend so we don't have to expose services.

[dacort]

Lots of info in this thread: https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1667448993176059905?s=46&t=IaQyr-qpD36V7gcfQZwzxA

Also: https://codesandbox.io/blog/how-we-clone-a-running-vm-in-2-seconds

[dacort]

More news: https://twitter.com/Pragmatic_Eng/status/1673726552364777476 and some examples (https://render.com, https://superdev.cloud, or https://vercel.com)

Would be cool if this also had functionality similar to direnv where you could just cd into a directory and magically be teleported to a magical mystery dev box. 😜

He says as he sits waiting for go test to blow out his cpus and fan.