- It's like someone should make a file... maybe in /etc ... and put short names for services in it... maybe it could be called /etc/services...
by kazinator
1 subcomments
- The file /etc/services maps names to port numbers, like /etc/hosts does for hosts.
E.g. "telnet localhost ssh" takes you to port 22 (not the default 23 for telnet). This works because /etc/services maps "ssh" to "22".
If you're sick of remembering port numbers, create some entries in your /etc/services.
Of course, only programs which use getservbyname to resolve port numbers will accept your names.
by PufPufPuf
2 subcomments
- There is no need to come up with "local TLDs" like .vibe, .local, .test and so on -- there is already an industry convention! macOS and most Linux distros support subdomains of localhost, so <anything>.localhost works. You still need the reverse proxy to do the host->port mapping, but you save yourself local DNS fiddling.
by magicalhippo
2 subcomments
- I know it's mixing of layers, but I can't help but feel the IPv6 transition missed the boat when they didn't just get rid of ports in the process. They've changed so much else anyway.
Want to run another webserver instance or whatever on your computer? Get the OS to allocate a new IP for it. Ports be damned.
Could be implemented in a backwards compatible way by requiring all IPv6 TCP/UDP traffic to use a fixed port number.
by OriPekelman
1 subcomments
- This is really amusing. Because absolutly eveyrone I know vibe-coded this thing. I think the first one was https://github.com/ralt/dns-to-port possibly mine is second (but it is very much a joke so I am not linking it) .. Vercel later did https://github.com/vercel-labs/portless and I would imagine quite a few others. Zeitgeist. Also this does probably mean its kinda useful.
And that none of us can get bothered to "Google" if a thing that does the same thing already exists. Currently vibing, on a train, a spaced repetition thing for my kid - because I needed a specific list of countries - and its faster to create the whole app rather than figure-out how to find one that would do this.
by swiftcoder
0 subcomment
- I like localias[1] for this problem. Not only do you get nice aliases for all your local ports, but you also get nice Caddy-managed TLS certs for them
[1]: https://github.com/peterldowns/localias
- Wow ... judging from all of these harsh comments, it seems the flood from Reddit to HN is going "well". I cannot believe all of the negative comments around the development of a piece of handy software.
by lelanthran
3 subcomments
- I think this product demonstrates the atrophying of thought that results from too much LLM usage: design was obviously a long back-and-forth with a sycophantic LLM.
I find out what all my local servers are by `cat /etc/hosts`, because I put them in there. They run using an entry in the nginx config.
For short-lived stuff I don't even bother with that, I just use `whatever.localhost`.
If there was no LLM, author would have put a little more thought into this, maybe did a google search, and realised that all he needed were two shell scripts.
The more you use LLMs, the less you actually think
> The real annoyance is that it wasn’t just one machine. It was layers.
> I wanted a simple launcher for all the things that aren’t traditional desktop apps. Not Finder, Alfred or Raycast.
The entire damn article is like this - why would I trust software to run on my local machine when it was written by someone who did not even take care writing a blog post? How much care would they have possibly put into reviewing their vibe coded slop if they couldn't even bother to review their blog post?
- There's a simple method you can use with nginx and /etc/hosts, I wrote about it couple days ago [0]. I used it for an internal demo recently and realized that a new breed of devs have never seen a non localhost url run locally.
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/say-no-to-localhost3000-use-custom-...
- Why not resolve everything with UNIX sockets instead, that way you can have them named and scoped instead, hiding behind port 443, since it's mosly HTTP anyway.
by CGamesPlay
0 subcomment
- I've built this twice before. The main problem that I hit is that the AI agents suck at the process lifecycle management: leaving processes alive, starting the same daemon multiple times, etc.
From a brief glance over the code I like the approaches I see. Using the `/etc/resolver/` mechanism is a new trick to me!
The interesting part to me isn't the port numbers, it's the automatic service start/stop, including idle route shutdown.
by bennett_dev
0 subcomment
- Sounds similar to Vercel‘s portless CLI (https://portless.sh/)
- I wonder why not use nginx and some local DNS settings to just serve all these local services under a new, local URL.
Not too long ago I had a similar issue and solved with that.
- This is literally what mDNS is for. Didn't even know that it was a thing until I needed it for some custom firmware I was writing recently. It's like DNS but also has service port advertisements.
- This is a valid concern, certainly. I use kube for most things so it's not a problem, but my homeserver and its apps run on quadlets that I manage. In my case, I just added a README.md in the server account folder that each project's CLAUDE.md or whatever is configured to read. Then it selects a port and sticks that in the document and to be honest I have a few tens of services and it works. Haha, a direct replacement of machine for my own process.
by c-hendricks
0 subcomment
- A few other solutions / notes:
Your browser might be able find what you're looking for if you just type in the page title
Your dev stuff could just open the browser automatically when you start it
*.localhost is a Secure Context in Chrome and Firefox
by hotfixguru
0 subcomment
- Vercel’s portless is a great alternative, but unfortunately it doesn’t work well with oauth flows.
I’ve built portmap[0] to solve that. Also comes with skills which makes it work really great with coding agents (instructions in the readme).
[0] https://github.com/JonasKs/portmap
by hollow-moe
0 subcomment
- You might also use another "localhost", the whole 127.0.0.0/8 is reserved for them. macos is a pain there because it only binds 127.0.0.1 to the local interface but you can add more manually.
- Alternative https://github.com/peterldowns/localias
Granted no fancy UI to start and stop things but is it really needed?
Tbh this is not a single binary you need dnsmasq go and other things
- I think about a decade ago pow did something similar, but using the .test domain, and perhaps ruby specific
https://github.com/basecamp/pow/tree/master
- Not the same, but omeone recently posted this "port" tool here on HN: https://github.com/raskrebs/sonar
- I created something similar to help me spin up complex apps in multiple worktrees with full port orchestration: https://outport.dev/
by alsetmusic
0 subcomment
- Don't use localhost:3000, use your own custom domain[0]
0. https://idiallo.com/blog/say-no-to-localhost3000-use-custom-...
by BrandiATMuhkuh
0 subcomment
- Cool project. Just yesterday I looked at https://portless.sh/ which is vercels take.
- I use Cloudflare Tunnel so most of the products I build are exposed and listed there. I just add comments for those that aren't exposed (eg. browser extension dev port) to that file too. A single doc means coding agents know to look there and keep it updated too.
- *.localhost works btw
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6761#section-6.3
- I thought that was the reason ‘lsof -i -P’ existed
by Hard_Space
0 subcomment
- I use subdomains on an OVH VPS, since I want to access the services outside the network, so I can use freshrss.mydomain.com. But anything that can rationalize port number sprawl is welcome.
by FactoriumNet
0 subcomment
- I have a strange short-term memory that immediately forgets where I was. I think it just decides I made my decision and no longer needed that trivia clouding the next thought. This is exactly what I have struggled with. Thanks a ton for this!!
- Interesting.
I've been wanting something like this for local Dev, but I think more:
Per user DNS.
So if the process doing the lookup is my own then redirect to the named service.
- Huh when I start a service in dev, I just click on the link in the terminal to visit the url. What is even the problem?
- People will do anything to avoid learning the basics. Nothing new.
- Aspire.dev should be mentioned here.
by roywashere
0 subcomment
- I hate these signs of LLM generated texts so much!!
> The real annoyance is that it wasn’t just one machine. It was layers.
- I use the tailscale services feature for this, added benefit is I get https.
- I'm slightly annoyed that vite's default port isn't 8483
- What is the benefit of using HTTPS for this particular use case?
- This project is essentially "give me some metadata & a command which takes env $PORT, and I'll handle the rest". Which is neat!
I am also sick of handling port numbers - I end up allocating them on a schema to different services, so for testing I can spool any VM/service combination and avoid crossover. But if I want the same service twice, ah...
It always fascinated me that ports don't have any kind of textual resolver, so you can bind to `:1234` and also say "please also accept `:foobar`".
But that would itself require some kind of "port resolver" on a device, and that's another service to break and fix :)
- i have something like this too, currently a 60 line nodejs file
by pratikdeoghare
0 subcomment
- What I do is use a hash function to derive port number from service name.
by deafpolygon
0 subcomment
- Unrelated, but that site is unreadable to me... dark grey on black?
by hahahacorn
0 subcomment
- Bind to Port 0
- Nice. An instant disappointment that there's no Linux support, but adding it should be a quick prompt away.
- It is funny, I just built something like this last week and named it "Network". Additionally it scans for any type of data packages arriving at the SonicWall and sees if they are approved by me or not. I am paranoid after using TP Link at home like a dumbass.
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by lihanghanger
0 subcomment
- This is a neat approach. One thing I wonder about is how it handles services that use the same port number across different protocols (like 443 for both HTTPS and SMTPS). The /etc/services file approach has the same ambiguity, but at least it lists the protocol alongside the port. A lookup table that includes protocol would be more robust for mixed environments.
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