Show HN: Sidekick - Live application debugger is now open source

[sozal]

Sidekick is a live application debugger that lets you troubleshoot your applications while they keep on running. It allows you to add dynamic logs and put non-breaking breakpoints in your running application without the need of stopping & redeploying. Currently supporting Java, Python & Node.js runtimes.

Sidekick Open Source is here to allow self-hosting and make live debugging more accessible. Built for everyone who needs extra information from their running applications.

[kaba0]

Why would I use it over the JVM’s stellar observability tools, that I assume can do a much better job due to being integral to it?

I don’t only mean the debugger, but also the flight recorder.

[sozal]

Hi,

This is Serkan. Co-Founder&CTO at Thundra, the company behind Sidekick.

Flight recorder is a very useful tool for profiling your apps running on JVM. But next generation debugging tools like Sidekick allows you to debug your Java applications without stopping at breakpoint (so it can be used even on production)

Sidekick - gives you local debugging like experience with tracepoints (aka non-breaking breakpoints) - And allows you to inject logs dynamically to anywhere on the fly without code change, rebuild and redeploy

[bariskaya]

Hello, HN! I'm Barış from Sidekick.

Sidekick is a live application debugger that lets you troubleshoot your applications while they keep on running. It allows you to add dynamic logs and put non-breaking breakpoints in your running application without the need of stopping & redeploying.

Currently supporting Java, Python & Node.js runtimes.

So Sidekick is like Chrome DevTools for your backend.

Problems that we solve

- Collecting dynamic data from running applications is hard

- Adding new logs and redeploying apps takes time ⌛

- Developer onboarding is hard for complex systems

- Microservices are harder to debug

- Logging everything or using APMs create so much unnecessary data

What we offer

Here is how you can benefit from Sidekick and boost your developer productivity up to 3x

- Debug your remote application (monoliths or microservices on Kubernetes, Docker, VMs, or Local) and collect actionable data from your remote application.

- Add logs to your production apps without redeploying or restarting

- Cut your monitoring costs with on-demand & conditional logpoints & tracepoints

- On-board new developers by showing how your apps work using real-time data.

- Observe Event-Driven Systems with ease

- Programmatically control where and when you collect data from your applications

- Either use Sidekick's Web IDE, VS Code & IntelliJ IDEA extensions to control your Sidekick Actions or use headless clients to bring Sidekick to your workflow in any way you want!

- Evaluate the impact of an error on applications with integrated distributed tracing.

- Collaborate with your colleagues by sharing snapshots taken by Sidekick.

- Reduce the time spent context-switching between different tools.

Our journey:

It has been around 6 months since we released Sidekick as a standalone solution and the last 6 months were a roller coaster. We have improved Sidekick to make it a true developer-first tool that makes the developers a part of the core loop. You can read my blog to learn more about our journey:

https://medium.com/runsidekick/past-present-and-future-of-si...

  In addition to our new features, we have decided to make Sidekick Open Source to allow self-hosting and make live debugging more accessible. Now it is ready to meet you! 

TLDR; Sidekick is a plus one for your observability stack, built for everyone who needs extra information from their running applications, and now it is open-source! We still have a lot to do and we would love to hear from you in the comments down below, your feedback and your recommendations

[fillskills]

In addition to being OSS, Do you mind sharing the differentiation or with overlap w Lightrun and Rookout?

[mdaniel]

> AGPL-3.0 license

https://github.com/runsidekick/sidekick/blob/v0.0.1/LICENSE

I knew what it was going to be before even looking

[resoluteteeth]

> I knew what it was going to be before even looking

Assuming that it's just the server part that's AGPL, that's not very restrictive for something that's purely a development tool.

That's VERY different from a library you need to include in your finished application being AGPL or even server software that you might expose to end users being AGPL.

[CSDude]

At least AGPL-3.0 is more honest and direct than SSPL or other vague licenses to prevent Amazon'd. Lawyers and internal legal departmens did not catch up to those licenses yet. Pretending to be open source until a point and forking under a new license leaves a bad taste.

[bariskaya]

this article: https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-licenses#what-are-the-... helped us a lot on our decision.

can you elaborate what is wrong with using a license that is listed on https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical ?

[fuzzythinker]

Remove the finger image in the README. It's a huge turnoff.

[bariskaya]

sad to hear. created a pr for that