New Developer Onboarding

Get a new developer from a blank machine to a fully running environment with a single command.

Scenario

The team has three repositories — an API, a frontend, and a shared config library. Each needs dependencies installed and the dev environment configured. Without raid, this takes an afternoon and a long Confluence page. With raid, it's one command.

Profile

The team commits this file to an internal dev-environment repo:

acme.raid.yaml

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/8bitalex/raid/main/schemas/raid-profile.schema.json
name: acme-platform

repositories:
  - name: "api"
    url: "[email protected]:acme/api.git"
    path: "~/dev/acme/api"

  - name: "frontend"
    url: "[email protected]:acme/frontend.git"
    path: "~/dev/acme/frontend"

  - name: "shared-config"
    url: "[email protected]:acme/shared-config.git"
    path: "~/dev/acme/shared-config"

environments:
  - name: "local"
    variables:
      - name: "API_URL"
        value: "http://localhost:3000"
      - name: "FRONTEND_PORT"
        value: "8080"
    tasks:
      - type: Print
        message: "Local environment applied"

install:
  tasks:
    - type: Shell
      cmd: "brew bundle"
      condition:
        platform: "darwin"
    - type: Shell
      cmd: "raid env local"
    - type: Print
      message: "Setup complete."

Per-repo configs

Each repo ships its own raid.yaml defining the commands and environment variables specific to that service:

~/dev/acme/api/raid.yaml

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/8bitalex/raid/main/schemas/raid-repo.schema.json
name: "api"
branch: "main"

commands:
  - name: "api-dev"
    usage: "Start the API in development mode"
    tasks:
      - type: Shell
        cmd: "go run ./cmd/server --env=local"

  - name: "api-test"
    usage: "Run API tests"
    tasks:
      - type: Shell
        cmd: "go test ./..."

environments:
  - name: "local"
    variables:
      - name: "DATABASE_URL"
        value: "postgres://localhost:5432/api_dev"
      - name: "API_PORT"
        value: "3000"
      - name: "LOG_LEVEL"
        value: "debug"
    tasks:
      - type: Shell
        cmd: "docker-compose up -d db"

~/dev/acme/frontend/raid.yaml

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/8bitalex/raid/main/schemas/raid-repo.schema.json
name: "frontend"
branch: "main"

commands:
  - name: "fe-dev"
    usage: "Start the frontend dev server"
    tasks:
      - type: Shell
        cmd: "npm run dev"

environments:
  - name: "local"
    variables:
      - name: "VITE_API_URL"
        value: "http://localhost:3000"
      - name: "VITE_ENV"
        value: "local"

New developer workflow

# 1. Register the team profile
raid profile add ~/profiles/acme.raid.yaml

# 2. Clone everything and run install tasks
raid install

# 3. Apply the local environment
raid env local

# 4. Start working
raid api-dev
raid fe-dev

All three repos clone concurrently. If one already exists it is skipped. Profile-level install tasks run next, followed by repo-level install tasks.

Adding new team members later

No changes needed. The same four commands work on every machine. When a new service is added to the profile, new developers get it automatically, and existing developers can run raid install new-service to clone just the new repo without re-running everything.