Ask HN: How do you keep track of the components you develop and run?

For most organisations traditional tools like IDEs, version control systems, logging and monitoring should indeed suffice. A great IDE such as IntelliJ IDEA and a tool like GitLab help a lot when it comes to keeping track of source code dependencies and deployments.

Having a tool that visualises all dependencies in one place is nice to have but it shouldn't be essential to run a system.

If you're running a larger number of services service discovery and properly naming services is vital rather than being able to visualise them.

For https://devel.tech and https://www.hskflashcards.com, I split the common JS, SCSS, and Python code into a git submodule.

I named my common library "based":

- Uses reStructuredText + docutils to display content in a consistent fashion (https://devel.tech/features/django-vs-flask/, https://www.hskflashcards.com/downloads)

- Common fabric source code for deploying Django websites, updating the sites

- Customized crispy-form templates and SCSS files

- Using Yarn "Workspaces" to load the common JS/SAAS code (https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/workspaces/)

- In Webpack, I share common webpack code via wrapping the configs in a function and passing in dependencies.

- Common Python code is available to be accessed for reusable Django applications, but also plain-old python

- And use of "import_string" in django settings to load additional plugin configurations [1]

[1] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/utils/#django.uti...

P.S. I am writing an article (in draft atm) about import_strings in Django at https://devel.tech/tips/n/djms3tTe/demystifying-djangos-impo..., intended for people new to Python and Django. You can also use import_string in your own Django code to 'opt-in' to any sort of feature you keep in a common codebase. In my circumstance, I use it as a way to register docutils roles and directives via django settings. This pattern also holds true without Django, too (https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.html).

P.P.S. I highly recommend Yarn Workspaces. It's fast, and really makes it a lot easier to share front-end code.

We use rez for package management (libraries) and it does have tools to show every package that depends on your package, or, every library you depend on (and their dependencies) in a node graph.

We use consul UI to show all the services that we have, where they're running, number of instances and so on.

We use ELK for service specific metrics / centralized logs.

We use Confluence WIKI for user / dev docs. Plus the README on the project git.