alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Mercek – A Desktop IDE for AWS ECS
Hey HN I've been using ECS for a while now and found it annoying having to log into the console everytime
I use Lens for Kubernetes but couldnt find an equivalent for ECS so i built one!
The project is open source as well https://github.com/utibeabasi6/mercek
Comments
Neat, but this feels to me like buying a single-use kitchen gadget. Yes, the console does not have everything neatly together like this, but it can manage everything across all AWS services.
Having to deal with a separate (electron) app for every AWS service would be a nightmare.
Thanks for sharing this and congrats on shipping! I, too, feel this pain.
There was a similar undertaking to create something like k9s for ECS called E1S:
https://github.com/keidarcy/e1s
And I too intended to build one to server my specific ops needs and satisfy my taste for what information should be presented instead of how AWS organizes thing.
Tried it out for a few mins and it does what advertised. I think Electron is perfectly fine for what this app does: Managing ECS. It's not an all-in-one platform the same way VSCode is, so bloating isn't really an issue. On my M2 MacBook pro 64GB, it's sitting at 30.5 Mb of memory usage. JetBrains' toolbox app (Written using Java) is sitting at 505.1Mb and this app arguably does more than that one, if not an equal amount. The wallpaper process is taking up 29.9Mb of memory, so this app amounts to just another wallpaper worth of memory which is nothing.
However, for any app that aims to be an "all-in-one" desktop GUI replacement for the aws console, which may need extensions, a native framework would be the way to go over electron.
One piece of feedback I have is to just have a selection menu for models from providers rather than asking the user to input text, as well as an option for effort level if available.
The project is open source as well https://github.com/utibeabasi6/mercek
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I want to try this, but unfortunately there are just too many Electron applications on my computer now.
I literally cannot run anymore without slowing everything down.
This is something which other software makers need to start considering.
There's actually limited RAM now on machines.
Codex and Claude Desktop both are gigantic memory hogs. And they leak memory all the time, but they provide value which is quite high.
Add in a couple of editors and the GitHub app. And then the actual browsers. And it actually stops me from downloading any more electron apps.
Could this be made into a native application?