Latest Console newsletter

Each week we pick out the most interesting tools for developers. We keep track of everything - dev tools, devops, cloud, and APIs - so you don’t have to. This is the content of the newsletter sent on 10 Jun 2021.

Interesting tools

mkcert

CLI for managing local dev certificates.

What we like: Solves the hassle of configuring SSL for local dev endpoints by configuring and managing a root CA. Means you don’t need to leave testing SSL to staging (or prod!) or store real certs locally. Allows you to generate certs for localhost. Cross platform + support for browser specific root stores.

What we don't like: You still need to configure your server to use the certs. GitHub binaries built with a slightly older version of Go (1.13) so no Apple Silicon support - use the homebrew version which does have Apple Silicon binaries.

Openbase

Database of open source packages.

What we like: Packages ranked based on various criteria such as documentation, performance, popularity. Categories for common use cases to help find most used packages. Analyze dependencies and project activity e.g. release cadence, commit frequency.

What we don't like: Only supports searching JS packages - leaderboards available for Python, Rust, Go, Swift and Java libraries. Some criteria are more subjective than others e.g. are frequent commits good or bad?