[benesch]

For local dev + testing, we recommend just hitting the production turbopuffer service directly, but with a separate test org/API key: https://turbopuffer.com/docs/testing

Works well for the vast majority of our customers (although we get the very occasional complaint about wanting a dev environment that works offline). The dataset sizes for local dev are usually so small that the cost rounds to free.

[lambda]

> although we get the very occasional complaint about wanting a dev environment that works offline

It's only occasional because the people who care about dev environments that work offline are most likely to just skip you and move on.

For actual developer experience, as well as a number of use cases like customers with security and privacy concerns, being able to host locally is essential.

Fair enough if you don't care about those segments of the market, but don't confuse a small number of people asking about it with a small number of people wanting it.

[nik9000]

As someone who works for a competitor, they are probably right holding off on that segment for a while. Supporting both cloud and local deployments is somewhere between 20% harder and 300% harder depending on the day.

I'm watching them with excitement. We all learn from each other. There's so much to do.

[sa-code]

Can confirm. With a setup that works offline, one can

- start small on a laptop. Going through procurement at companies is a pain

- test things in CI reliably. Outages don’t break builds

- transition from laptop scale to web scale easily with the same API with just a different backend

Otherwise it’s really hard to justify not using S3 vectors here

The current dev experience is to start with faiss for PoCs, move to pgvector and then something heavy duty like one of the Lucene wrappers.

[benesch]

Yep, we're well aware of the selection bias effects in product feedback. As we grow we're thinking about how to make our product more accessible to small orgs / hobby projects. Introducing a local dev environment may be part of that.

Note that we already have a in-your-own-VPC offering for large orgs with strict security/privacy/regulatory controls.

[sroussey]

That’s not local though

[enigmo]

having a local simulator (DynamoDB, Spanner, others) helps me a lot for offline/local development and CI. when a vendor doesn't off this I have often end up mocking it out (one way or another) and have to wait for integration or e2e tests for feedback that could have been pushed further to the left.

in many CI environments unit tests don't have network access, it's not purely a price consideration.

(not a turbopuffer customer but I have been looking at it)

[benesch]

> in many CI environments unit tests don't have network access, it's not purely a price consideration.

I've never seen a hard block on network access (how do you install packages/pull images?) but I am sympathetic to wanting to enforce that unit tests run quickly by minimizing/eliminating RTT to networked services.

We've considered the possibility of a local simulator before. Let me know if it winds up being a blocker for your use case.

[lambda]

> how do you install packages/pull images

You pre-build the images with packages installed beforehand, then use those image offline.

[benesch]

My point is it's enough of a hassle to set up that I've yet to see that level of restriction in practice (across hundreds of CI systems).

[dzbarsky]

Look into Bazel, a very standard build system used at many large tech companies. It splits fetches from build/test actions and allows blocking network for build/test actions with a single CLI flag. No hassle at all.

The fact that you haven't come across this kind of setup suggests that your hundreds of CI systems are not representative of the industry as a whole.

[benesch]

I agree our sample may not be representative but we try to stay focused on the current and next crop of tpuf customers rather than the software industry as a whole. So far "CI prohibits network access during tests" just hasn't come up as a pain point for any of them, but as I mentioned in another comment [0], we're definitely keeping an open mind about introducing an offline dev experience.

(I am familiar with Bazel, but I'll have to save the war stories for another thread. It's not a build tool we see our particular customers using.)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46758156

[enigmo]

you pull packages from a trusted package repository, not from the internet. this is not rare in my experience (financial services, security) and will become increasingly common due to software supply chain issues.

[sa-code]

I should have clarified, by local dev and testing I did in fact mean offline usage.

Without that it’s unfortunately a non starter

[benesch]

So I can note this down on our roadmap, what's the root of your requirement here? Supporting local dev without internet (airplanes, coffee shops, etc.)? Unit test speed? Something else?

[sa-code]

I listed some reasons in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46757853

I appreciate your responsiveness and open mind

[benesch]

Thanks, appreciate this! Jotted down some notes on our roadmap.

[sa-code]

I wish you the best