Dev Socket - Puter — ContextQMD

Backend - dev socket

The "dev socket" allows you to interact with Puter's backend by running commands. It's a UNIX socket that lets you run commands registered with CommandService (e.g. help, logs:indent, params:get, etc.).

Enabling the dev socket

The dev socket is provided by the dev-console extension and is opt-in. To enable it:

Set the environment variable DEVCONSOLE=1 when starting Puter (e.g. npm run dev already does this).
The extension lives in extensions/dev-console/ and registers a dev-socket service when DEVCONSOLE=1.

Socket location

The socket is created in a directory chosen as follows (in order):

PUTER_DEV_SOCKET_DIR if set
./volatile/runtime if it exists (typical local dev)
otherwise the process current working directory

The socket file is named dev.sock.

Connecting

When in that directory, connect with your tool of choice. For example, using nc and rlwrap for readline history:

rlwrap nc -U ./dev.sock

If it is successful you will see a message with instructions. Enter a command (e.g. help) and press Enter.