DEV Community: TheCommieAxolotl

Introducing OnlyNv

TheCommieAxolotl — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 22:23:18 +0000

Today, I am pleased to introduce OnlyNv, a platform for peer-to-peer and peer-to-CI¹ syncing of environment variables and secrets.

OnlyNv allows you to take your local .env files, and store them in a centralised location. This allows you to share your environment variables with your team, and keep them in sync across all your CI/CD pipelines.

How it works

OnlyNv stores your environment variables in a centralised, encrypted database.

Whenever you add or update an environment variable, OnlyNv will automatically sync it with your CI/CD pipelines.
Furthermore, your team members can pull the latest environment variables directly to their local machines.

Demo

Let's say we have a project, my-project, with the following .env file:

DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=password

We also have a GitHub repository, my-org/my-project, which we want to setup to receive our environment variables.

First, we need to create a new project on OnlyNv. We can do this by running the following command in our terminal:

$ nv init

This will redirect us to the OnlyNv dashboard, where we can create a new project.

We'll now have a new file in our project directory, .lnvrc, which tells the CLI how to sync our environment variables.

We can now use nv link to log in to OnlyNv and sync our environment variables with our CI/CD pipelines.

$ nv link
  Linking project...

  Press ENTER to open in browser:
  https://onlynv.dev/projects/...

This will open a browser window, where we can log in to OnlyNv and link the project.

Finally, we can use nv sync to sync our environment variables with the server, and any CI/CD pipelines linked to our project.

$ nv sync
  Syncing my-platform (...)

  ✔ Found 1 file
    .env

  ✔ Encrypted data

  ✔ Sent data

  ✔ Decrypted data from server
  Writing .env
  Synced project

  Updated GitHub repository: https://github.com/my-org/my-project

OnlyNv is currently in beta, and we are looking for feedback from the community. If you want to try it out please join the waitlist, and feel free to upvote on ProductHunt to show your support.

Happy coding!

Currently, we offer Vercel, GitHub, Netlify, and GitLab support. More platforms are coming soon. ↩

A New Look for git.rela.dev

TheCommieAxolotl — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 02:15:26 +0000

Brought over from the Rela blog.

As of this week, the RelaGit site has been overhauled with a totally new appearance.
The old style of the site was a bit too homogeneous, and it was decided that it lacked some of the elegance and confident design that was wanted to convey.

As you can see in this old deployment, the old landing page lacked both the brand identity and confidence. But let's break down the hero section:

The Navigation Bar: There's only one way to phrase it, weak. It lacks a strong gap between items and therefore feels cramped, it is also always at full white, which makes interactions feel uninteresting and not considered. In the new design, the bar sits back from the screen, taking more space but feeling less intrusive because of the dimmed colors and the more considered spacing.
The Hero Text: Sites that have their product name as their hero text don't convert well. The too-dim subtitle also didn't help, it looked like an afterthought. In the new design, the hero text is a description of the client, and the subtitle is baked into the hero. I've also scrapped the call to action button in favour of a linear design, with intuitive call to actions later down in the page.
The Image: The one thing that remained mostly the same is the image, it's still a simple photo of the client, although I've updated the diff that is shown in the screen to give a more complete view of the client's look.

Along with the obvious changes, I also replaced the disabled download button with a waitlist signup field. By entering your email, you will be added to the waitlist for the client, and you will be notified when it is ready for beta testing.

Continued Development of the client

Don't worry, this hasn't stopped development on the client, this month alone has seen the below changes:

There's now an integrated branch picker, which dynamically responds to any changes made remotely or locally and simplifies the many commands that can be used to interact with branches.
Logical a11y flow has been improved throughout the app, with the simplification of settings, auto-focusing of dynamic elements, and the integration of more focus traps.
The app now has a proper onboarding process, with a beautiful first-open screen, and a multi-step, hands-on tutorial that guides you through the app's most common features.

That's all for now, check out the new site today, and sign up for the waitlist!

Au revoir! 👋

8 Months and Counting.

TheCommieAxolotl — Sun, 24 Sep 2023 09:25:16 +0000

Brought over from Rela.

In tech, the hardest commodity to keep is motivation. Sure, if you're sponsored by a massive company or salaried at a FAANG, you can keep going as long as you like. But for an independent, developing things on the side, it's a lot harder.

I made that my last blog post in the honeymoon phase of the project.
I was excited, I was motivated, and I was ready to go.
I had a plan, I had a vision, and I had a goal.
I was going to make something that I could be proud of, and that people would love to use.

And then I started really working on it.

Turns out, building a git client from the ground up is hard. There are countless features to implement and using something with such a temperamental API is a nightmare. So, I lost my motivation... for about 4 months.

The 4 Month Hiatus

After a while of doing other things, tinkering with some fun ideas (à la pyotr), I had some thoughts about Rela(Git) again. I started by implementing a simple CLI tool for the commit standard, and then I started working on the client again.

What's with the new look?

During the Hiatus, I came up with a design system that I call Illyrica (ih-lyr-i-cah), after a technologically advanced planet in a certain Sci-Fi series.
Quickly, I ported RelaGit to use this new design system, and I'm really happy with the results.

Head over to the main blog post to see the difference.

What's really next?

I know I said this last time, but I'm going to try and keep this blog updated more often, as well as posting to [here].

But for now, cya!

Announcing RelaGit

TheCommieAxolotl — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 03:36:40 +0000

Brought over from Rela.

Today, I am pleased to announce our first product, RelaGit. RelaGit is a Git Client designed to do everything you need, and everything you want. The client provides a simple, intuitive javascript API for managing workflows, repositories, and more.

Why RelaGit?

Existing Git Clients are well-tested, and have been around for a long time. They are battle-hardened but unfortunately, they are also very complex. RelaGit is meant to be simple, and easy to use. RelaGit is built with TypeScript, Electron, SolidJS and a custom Git library. Thsi will allow it to be faster and more speialised in what it does best. The client is designed to be useful for what the modern developer does ona day-to-day basis and make tasks faster and easier.

Open Source???

At Rela, we believe in the values of Open Source. (We even have a whole pledge on the topic) We are committed to making good Open Source software, and as such, we will be making RelaGit open source under the MIT license when it's release date comes around. For now, it is closed source. You can follow the development of RelaGit on our GitHub.

What's next?

This has been brief but don't worry: more is coming soon. Keep a look out for more posts on the blog, and more information added to the site.