Feature: Create and launch a test virtual machine with configuration matching any of the nodes as closely as possible #32

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opened 2025-12-08 16:07:48 +00:00 by zackw · 0 comments

One of the great advantages of declarative configuration should be that it's easy to spin up a test instance of any of your nodes, running as a virtual machine on your local workstation, so that you can test changes out thoroughly before pushing them into The Cloud at all. Yet this is surprisingly difficult with basic Nix and none of the fleet management tools I've looked at even try to make it easier. It would be a valuable feature for Arcana, IMO.

(There is some unavoidable complexity stemming from the fact that the test VM usually can't have exactly the same configuration as the production node; for example, the IP address has to be different, any TLS server certificates have to be different (and probably unsigned), etc. It may be a good idea to let people specify one or more override modules to be applied to each node's configuration when it's being run as a test VM.)

One of the great advantages of declarative configuration _should_ be that it's easy to spin up a test instance of any of your nodes, running as a virtual machine on your local workstation, so that you can test changes out thoroughly before pushing them into The Cloud at all. Yet this is surprisingly difficult with basic Nix and none of the fleet management tools I've looked at even try to make it easier. It would be a valuable feature for Arcana, IMO. (There is some unavoidable complexity stemming from the fact that the test VM usually can't have _exactly_ the same configuration as the production node; for example, the IP address has to be different, any TLS server certificates have to be different (and probably unsigned), etc. It may be a good idea to let people specify one or more override modules to be applied to each node's configuration when it's being run as a test VM.)
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arcana/arcana#32
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