We have all been there when we wanted to start multiple dependent micro service(s) at once in our local to develop / test an application.

Well as a developer I have always believed that writing automation take time but eventually saves time!!

Now that you have read until here you are curious enough to know the solution I have in mind right!!

Let quickly jump to that section below.

Setup

The setup is quite simple and easy to setup for mac

• Install

  • Using homebrew

    brew install foreman

  • Using npm

    npm install -g foreman

  Note: If you install via npm then replace the command foreman with nf

• Define

  Go ahead and define a simple Procfile as below in root folder of all your services

<BACKEND_SERVICE_NAME>: cd PATH_TO_SERVICE && <COMMAND_TO_START_THE_SERVICE>
<YET_ANOTHER_BACKEND_SERVICE_NAME>: cd PATH_TO_SERVICE &&  <COMMAND_TO_START_THE_SERVICE>
<FRONTEND_SERVICE_NAME>: cd PATH_TO_SERVICE && <COMMAND_TO_START_THE_SERVICE_2>

Example:

web: cd webserver && ./gradlew build>
payment: cd payments &&  rails serve
ui: cd frontend && npm run dev

• Run

  foreman start

Logs:

18:51:12: web.1     |  Web Server started listening on 0.0.0.0:8080
18:51:12: payment.1 |  Payments started listening on 0.0.0.0:3000
18:51:12: ui.1      |  node started listening on 0.0.0.0:4000

The setup is that simple and easy to use

Advance usage

You can start multiple instance of the any service to scale and balance the load

foreman start web=5 payment=3

Logs:

18:51:12: web.1     |  Web Server started listening on 0.0.0.0:8080
18:51:12: web.2     |  Web Server started listening on 0.0.0.0:8081
18:51:12: web.3     |  Web Server started listening on 0.0.0.0:8082
18:51:12: web.4     |  Web Server started listening on 0.0.0.0:8083
18:51:12: web.5     |  Web Server started listening on 0.0.0.0:8084
18:51:12: payment.1 |  Payments started listening on 0.0.0.0:3000
18:51:12: payment.2 |  Payments started listening on 0.0.0.0:3001
18:51:12: payment.3 |  Payments started listening on 0.0.0.0:3002
18:51:12: ui.1      |  node started listening on 0.0.0.0:4000

For more options and official documentation on the same find it here