Gru | Devpost

Inspiration

Ever wanted to play around with something new, but don't want to install anything on your computer? Meet Gru.

What it does

Gru is a tool that allows anyone to simply visit a website, or use a CLI tool, to instantly create an isolated virtual devbox in the cloud. Gru enables rapid prototyping and development by removing the initial setup time needed to get a development environment up and running.

How we built it

We used Amazon's Elastic Container Service to dynamically provision containers on demand. We then proxy information between the individual containers and clients via websockets. We built both a web and command-line interface that allow easy access to your container.

Challenges we ran into

Amazon's API did not provide enough flexibility, which forced us to hack around it. We also ended up writing our own Python terminal emulator.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Gru works! We were also able to provide dynamic port mapping to allow users to expose specific ports to the world for testing of any kind of TCP service.