4 ms·

Why not just have everything you need on your local machine? (I'm not a Mac user)

by yonatan8070 3y ago

frizlab 3y ago
I am a Mac user and I’m curious to know too
- cj 3y ago
  Executing a bunch of npm modules locally, having a Mongo and Redis database running 24/7. I don’t have a great answer. One thing I’ve noticed on Mac is that, using Activity Monitor, before installing all the dev dependencies for local dev nearly all processes seem to run under the local user’s user space, but after installing a bunch of stuff (with sudo) a ton of processes default to running as “system” I haven’t had time to research whether this actually has a meaningful impact on security, but TLDR I trust Mac’s out of the box security, but I instantly stop trusting it the moment I start installing a bunch of stuff via Homebrew and NPM.
  - comprev 3y ago
    nvm for Node + use containers for database services?
    - cj 3y ago
      nvm doesn’t stop npm modules from installing locally. many npm modules have pre/post install scripts that execute binaries and such that I’d rather not execute locally Docker for Redis/Mongo is reasonable, but npm dependencies creeping into the system is something you can’t really easily undo other than a full wipe and reinstall of the OS. Especially when certain modules require sudo to install
      - comprev 3y ago
        Docker volumes might help with the module management too through executing npm i side a container. YMMV as performance can sometimes be an issue.
    - chrisweekly 3y ago
      tangent: fnm https://github.com/Schniz/fnm https://github.com/Schniz/fnm is faster than nvm and much cleaner in its shell integration.
  - eyelidlessness 3y ago
    You generally shouldn’t ever use sudo with either Homebrew or NPM. Homebrew is specifically designed to be used without elevated privileges. This has the downside that packages are owned by the user which first ran the install (which might lead to those packages running with elevated privileges after a sudo install as well? I don’t know, and I’m not eager to find out). NPM packages are typically either project local (and these definitely shouldn’t be installed with sudo), or “global” (which should be global in the sense of being installed on the user’s PATH, and thus shouldn’t require sudo for any normal setup either). You’re right to be cautious about the security implications of this.
    - pxc 3y ago
      > This has the downside that packages are owned by the user which first ran the install This is a bit of a security problem if Homebrew's .../bin is on your sudoers secure_path, because now your normal user can overwrite something that might be invoked via a simple `sudo whatever`, which doesn't specify the full path to whatever > which might lead to those packages running with elevated privileges after a sudo install as well? I don’t know, and I’m not eager to find out No, definitely not by any normal mechanism. Maybe there are some exception, like packages that set up LaunchAgents or LaunchDaemons, or which run the install scripts of .pkg installers which ask for elevated privileges. But those can set up programs that run with elevated privileges anyway.
    - comprev 3y ago
      Brew will prompt for elevated privileged when necessary, or at least formulae should conform to that design
  - chrisweekly 3y ago
    Strong rec to avoid use of sudo for brew or (p)npm, not sure why you'd want to do that.
    - newaccount74 3y ago
      sudo or not makes very little difference, unless you actually use multiple user accounts with different privileges on your Mac.
      - chrisweekly 3y ago
        it makes a big difference if you don't want to practice poor security hygiene and form a bad habit of constantly entering your password for no reason.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    The nice thing about the Mac is that you can run a lot of unix tools natively. But of course, anything that runs on your Mac is a potential security hole. Obviously all 3rd party apps that you use can compromise security. But it can also be your own code: If eg. your rails app has a security vulnerability, which is common during development, and you run it with your local user, as is common during dev, then that vulnerability can potentially compromise all your data. So if you want to be safe, run all your dev stuff in VMs or on a separate device, or in a container or something. Of course, that is cumbersome, and whether it is necessary or not depends on what kind of threats you expect...
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Depends on why you're a mac in the first place. For me it was iOS adjacent dev, and that meant upgrading the building stack every year, uncluding straight OS upgrades. And thus screwing my other dependencies every year. After the third or fourth time, I switched to a VM that will stay stable basically whatever happens to the system.
jfoutz 3y ago
So, Mac doesn't come with a package manager. There are things you can do with port and brew, to alleviate some pain. Me personally, I fool around with a lot of languages, and sometimes I don't quite keep every project up to date with the latest version. For work, the situation is even more challenging, because I don't have the authority to go tell teams to upgrade or not upgrade, but sometimes I need to build their projects. None of this is really Mac specific. I used to use virtual box for this, which worked pretty well. I could set up a baseline environment and snapshot new boxes with new language revs. Docker can kind of cover this, but I tend to over do it, breaking things out into the one you build with, and the one you run with, and it's fine, but it's a lot to keep in my head. So, I'm kinda flakey about that. Now, I'm slowly building up some proficiency with nix. I think this is what I really want, to swap out the whole chain of system dependencies, and build docker containers or vms out of that if I need them. Perhaps I'm a poor sysadmin. _everything_ locally installed makes things real weird after a while (years).
- cj 3y ago
  > Perhaps I'm a poor sysadmin. _everything_ locally installed makes things real weird after a while (years). Same experience here (years). Because it’s something that creeps up over time, the problems aren’t obvious overnight.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    This is one of the good reasons to use Qubes OS.
  - moojd 3y ago
    My path was vm -> containers -> nix. With nix flakes and the direnv extension in vscode you can get a clean per-project dev environment with zero docker overhead and without dev tools cluttering up your global environment and causing issues.
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  Use orbstack, install things in their own container, Mount local volumes

Why not just have everything you need on your local machine? (I'm not a Mac user)

frizlab 3y ago

I am a Mac user and I’m curious to know too

cj 3y ago
Executing a bunch of npm modules locally, having a Mongo and Redis database running 24/7. I don’t have a great answer. One thing I’ve noticed on Mac is that, using Activity Monitor, before installing all the dev dependencies for local dev nearly all processes seem to run under the local user’s user space, but after installing a bunch of stuff (with sudo) a ton of processes default to running as “system” I haven’t had time to research whether this actually has a meaningful impact on security, but TLDR I trust Mac’s out of the box security, but I instantly stop trusting it the moment I start installing a bunch of stuff via Homebrew and NPM.
- comprev 3y ago
  nvm for Node + use containers for database services?
  - cj 3y ago
    nvm doesn’t stop npm modules from installing locally. many npm modules have pre/post install scripts that execute binaries and such that I’d rather not execute locally Docker for Redis/Mongo is reasonable, but npm dependencies creeping into the system is something you can’t really easily undo other than a full wipe and reinstall of the OS. Especially when certain modules require sudo to install
    - comprev 3y ago
      Docker volumes might help with the module management too through executing npm i side a container. YMMV as performance can sometimes be an issue.
  - chrisweekly 3y ago
    tangent: fnm https://github.com/Schniz/fnm https://github.com/Schniz/fnm is faster than nvm and much cleaner in its shell integration.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago
  You generally shouldn’t ever use sudo with either Homebrew or NPM. Homebrew is specifically designed to be used without elevated privileges. This has the downside that packages are owned by the user which first ran the install (which might lead to those packages running with elevated privileges after a sudo install as well? I don’t know, and I’m not eager to find out). NPM packages are typically either project local (and these definitely shouldn’t be installed with sudo), or “global” (which should be global in the sense of being installed on the user’s PATH, and thus shouldn’t require sudo for any normal setup either). You’re right to be cautious about the security implications of this.
  - pxc 3y ago
    > This has the downside that packages are owned by the user which first ran the install This is a bit of a security problem if Homebrew's .../bin is on your sudoers secure_path, because now your normal user can overwrite something that might be invoked via a simple `sudo whatever`, which doesn't specify the full path to whatever > which might lead to those packages running with elevated privileges after a sudo install as well? I don’t know, and I’m not eager to find out No, definitely not by any normal mechanism. Maybe there are some exception, like packages that set up LaunchAgents or LaunchDaemons, or which run the install scripts of .pkg installers which ask for elevated privileges. But those can set up programs that run with elevated privileges anyway.
  - comprev 3y ago
    Brew will prompt for elevated privileged when necessary, or at least formulae should conform to that design
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  Strong rec to avoid use of sudo for brew or (p)npm, not sure why you'd want to do that.
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    sudo or not makes very little difference, unless you actually use multiple user accounts with different privileges on your Mac.
    - chrisweekly 3y ago
      it makes a big difference if you don't want to practice poor security hygiene and form a bad habit of constantly entering your password for no reason.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- newaccount74 3y ago
  The nice thing about the Mac is that you can run a lot of unix tools natively. But of course, anything that runs on your Mac is a potential security hole. Obviously all 3rd party apps that you use can compromise security. But it can also be your own code: If eg. your rails app has a security vulnerability, which is common during development, and you run it with your local user, as is common during dev, then that vulnerability can potentially compromise all your data. So if you want to be safe, run all your dev stuff in VMs or on a separate device, or in a container or something. Of course, that is cumbersome, and whether it is necessary or not depends on what kind of threats you expect...
makeitdouble 3y ago
Depends on why you're a mac in the first place. For me it was iOS adjacent dev, and that meant upgrading the building stack every year, uncluding straight OS upgrades. And thus screwing my other dependencies every year. After the third or fourth time, I switched to a VM that will stay stable basically whatever happens to the system.

jfoutz 3y ago

So, Mac doesn't come with a package manager. There are things you can do with port and brew, to alleviate some pain. Me personally, I fool around with a lot of languages, and sometimes I don't quite keep every project up to date with the latest version. For work, the situation is even more challenging, because I don't have the authority to go tell teams to upgrade or not upgrade, but sometimes I need to build their projects. None of this is really Mac specific. I used to use virtual box for this, which worked pretty well. I could set up a baseline environment and snapshot new boxes with new language revs. Docker can kind of cover this, but I tend to over do it, breaking things out into the one you build with, and the one you run with, and it's fine, but it's a lot to keep in my head. So, I'm kinda flakey about that. Now, I'm slowly building up some proficiency with nix. I think this is what I really want, to swap out the whole chain of system dependencies, and build docker containers or vms out of that if I need them. Perhaps I'm a poor sysadmin. _everything_ locally installed makes things real weird after a while (years).

cj 3y ago
> Perhaps I'm a poor sysadmin. _everything_ locally installed makes things real weird after a while (years). Same experience here (years). Because it’s something that creeps up over time, the problems aren’t obvious overnight.
- fsflover 3y ago
  This is one of the good reasons to use Qubes OS.
- moojd 3y ago
  My path was vm -> containers -> nix. With nix flakes and the direnv extension in vscode you can get a clean per-project dev environment with zero docker overhead and without dev tools cluttering up your global environment and causing issues.
jbverschoor 3y ago
Use orbstack, install things in their own container, Mount local volumes