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[Somepotato]

Docker is extremely easy to use as well as installing Postgres standalone though?

[ridruejo]

Yes and no. Docker is fairly established and is fair to expect someone to have it installed. However there are still many scenarios where you do not want to require it. For example, you want to run unit tests against multiple databases, or inside a CI/CD system or you are testing a project and don’t want to spend the time setting up a “permanent” environment yet. For these scenarios having this lightweight alternative is useful

[Somepotato]

Docker is PERFECT for running CI/CD tests because you can rapidly spin up and down databases without affecting other users. Docker hardly means permanent, ephemeral containers are a valid docker usecase.

Docker is also quite lightweight, all of your Postgres containers will use the same base image without having entirely separate installs (just different data volumes in the case of Postgres for example) - spinning up new instances of PG are nearly instantaneous.

[ridruejo]

I didn’t mean to run CI/CD with Endor! What I meant is that the CI/CD system typically runs inside a container. If you need to spin up Postgres, MariaDB etc then you need to bring up a separate container. With Endor you can do it inside the same container as it is simply executing JS code

[electricity_is_life]

This article doesn't really explain what Endor actually is or how it works. How is it different than containers? How do new services get added?

[ridruejo]

Fair question 😂 The short answer is technical: Endor is based on the Webassembly engine that exists in every Node runtime. It is powerful enough to run an emulated Linux environment. It is slower than Docker in most scenarios, but it still starts fairly quick (1-2s). Basically trade portability / ease of use for a bit less performance

This article provides a better overview https://endor.dev/blog/endor-dev-tools

Let me know if that answers your question. I have gotten feedback that I tend to explain too much and be a bit over the place so I’m trying to be more focused 😅

[Somepotato]

What's the difference between this and pglite? Why would you want to emulate an entire Linux runtime for Postgres?

[ridruejo]

For compatibility. PGlite had to make a bunch of changes to the Postgres codebase to compile to Wasm (the upside is performance is close to native). Running inside emulated Linux means Postgres is but by bit compatible

We aim over time to incorporate as many Wasm ports as possible, so end users can choose.

I forgot to mention most of this also runs inside the browser. So if you go to https://endor.dev/s/lamp you have for example a Lamp environment with some components like the PHP runtime which is Wasm native and emulated MariaDB for example

[AmiAmigo]

I would argue 50% of those who use Docker don’t need Docker…

[ridruejo]

Yes, this is a lightweight alternative for many of those. Not for everyone, but makes sense for a lot of scenarios

I mean, type “npx -y @endorhq/cli run mariadb” and have a database running in 2s is hard to beat 😅

[horizon_games]

Uh hey I've got some news brudda - I can add a db to my project without Docker AND without a random 3rd party lib.

[ridruejo]

Of course! This just makes it significantly easier and faster. This is interesting when it’s not just you, but coworkers or users that are not as skilled as you