LocalDevLauncher

One Click. Every Service. Any Stack.

A CLI tool that lets local developers start their entire development environment with a single command. No more opening multiple terminals, navigating directories, or remembering startup commands.

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Why I Built This

I was working on a local project — a React frontend and a Spring Boot backend.

Every single time I sat down to code, before I could even write a line, I had to open a terminal for the frontend, navigate to the folder, run npm run dev, open another terminal for the backend, navigate again, run mvnw spring-boot:run, then finally open my browser and hope I didn't forget anything.

Every Single Day 🫠

It was maybe 3 minutes of work. But it was 3 minutes of friction before I could even start thinking about the actual problem I was trying to solve. And that friction adds up.

So I built LocalDevLauncher — a small tool that does all of that in one command. It's not fancy. It started as a personal script. But it works, and it saves me those 3 minutes every day, which means I spend more time actually building.

If you're a developer who runs multiple services locally, maybe it saves you those minutes too.

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🧩 The Problem

Every day, developers waste time doing this manually:

# Terminal 1
cd C:/projects/myapp/frontend
npm run dev

# Terminal 2
cd C:/projects/myapp/backend
mvn spring-boot:run

# Terminal 3
cd C:/projects/myapp
docker compose up

LocalDevLauncher replaces all of that with:

localdev>> start

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Features

• One command startup — start all your services instantly
• One command stop — kill everything cleanly
• Restart — stop and start in one command
• Status — see which services are running or stopped in real time
• List services — see everything registered at a glance
• Add / Remove / Update services — register any service, any stack
• Interactive shell — its own terminal, no directory navigation needed
• Single executable — just a .exe file, no installation required
• Stack agnostic — works with any language or framework

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🖥️ Supported Technologies

LocalDevLauncher works with anything that has a startup command.

Category	Examples
Frontend	React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Next.js, Vite
Backend	Spring Boot, Node.js, Django, Flask, Laravel, NestJS
Databases	PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis
Infrastructure	Docker, Docker Compose

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🖥️ Platform Support

Platform	Status
Windows	Fully tested and supported
Mac	Experimental — community feedback welcome
Linux	Experimental — community feedback welcome

Found a bug on Mac or Linux? Please open an issue on GitHub so we can fix it together.

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⚡ Quick Start

1. Download the executable

Download devlauncher.exe from the Releases page.

2. Double click devlauncher.exe

The LocalDevLauncher interactive shell opens:

========================================================================
         DEVLAUNCHER  v1.3 - Your Local Dev Control Center
                   One Command. Every Service.

         Platform : Windows

         type 'help' to get started
========================================================================

localdev>>

3. Register your services

localdev>> add frontend C:\projects\myapp\frontend npm run dev
localdev>> add backend C:\projects\myapp\backend mvnw spring-boot:run

4. Start everything

localdev>> start

Two terminal windows fire up. Open your browser. Done.

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📋 Commands

Command	Description	Example
add <name> <path> <command>	Register a service	add frontend C:\myapp\frontend npm run dev
remove <name>	Remove a service	remove frontend
update <name> path <new_path>	Update a service path	update frontend path C:\newpath\frontend
update <name> command <new_cmd>	Update a service command	update frontend command npm start
list	Show all registered services	list
start	Start all services	start
stop	Stop all services	stop
restart	Restart all services	restart
status	Show running or stopped status	status
clear	Clear the terminal	clear
help	Show available commands	help
exit	Exit LocalDevLauncher	exit

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📖 Tutorial & Command Reference

New to LocalDevLauncher? Check out the Tutorial for a full visual walkthrough of all commands with screenshots.

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Terminal Experience

LocalDevLauncher runs in any terminal. By default, double clicking the .exe opens it in a Windows CMD window with a dark background.

Alternative: If you prefer Git Bash, you can follow the steps below and run LocalDevLauncher from Git Bash instead

Requirements: Git for Windows installed — download here

# 1. Open Git Bash
# 2. Navigate to the folder where devlauncher.exe lives
cd /c/tools/devlauncher

# 3. Run it
./devlauncher.exe

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🔧 Run From Source

Requirements: Python 3.10+

pip install click colorama psutil
python shell.py

Build your own executable:

pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller --onefile --name devlauncher --icon=devlauncher.ico shell.py

Your executable will be in the dist/ folder.

Mac / Linux users: skip the --icon flag, it is Windows only.

pyinstaller --onefile --name devlauncher shell.py
``

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🤝 Contributing

This is an open side project. Feel free to open issues or pull requests.

If you tested LocalDevLauncher on Mac or Linux and something didn't work — please open an issue with your OS version, terminal emulator, and what command you were running. That kind of report is exactly what helps move experimental support to fully supported.

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LocalDevLauncher v1.3.1 — Created by a curious learner and one very talkative AI.✨