Script updated for Livebook 0.8.1 using environment variables instead of flags:

#!/bin/sh

# Usage:
#
# Development:  ./connect-live.sh
# Production:   ./connect-live.sh prod

fly_app="my-app"
fly_cookie=$ERL_COOKIE
dev_app="my-app"
dev_cookie="dev-cookie"

export LIVEBOOK_HOME="notebooks"
export LIVEBOOK_DATA_PATH="notebooks"

case "$1" in
  "prod")
    echo "[PROD] Starting Livebook..."
    fly_ip=$(fly ips private --app $fly_app | cut -f 3 | sed -n 2p)
    fly_node="$fly_app@$fly_ip"
    export LIVEBOOK_DEFAULT_RUNTIME="attached:$fly_node:$fly_cookie"
    export LIVEBOOK_NODE="livebook@127.0.0.1"
    export LIVEBOOK_DISTRIBUTION="name"
    export ERL_AFLAGS="-proto_dist inet6_tcp"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "[DEV] Starting Livebook..."
    dev_node="$dev_app@$(hostname)"
    export LIVEBOOK_DEFAULT_RUNTIME="attached:$dev_node:$dev_cookie"
    ;;
esac

livebook server

Nice tip on the password manager! I personally use direnv, so project secrets are kept in an .envrc that’s gitignored.

Some context first: my primary project is a site for our business of which I’m the sole developer, so I’m able to play some things a little more fast-and-loose than I might otherwise.

Two primary use-cases for me:

1. Debugging. When something’s reported, it’s really convenient to just be able to poke around and see what’s up, what state things are in, etc. instead of having to rely on what Zach of yesterday thought to log.

2. Performing one-off or infrequent tasks that I haven’t gotten around to making a UI for. Basically using Livebook as a bespoke admin interface. There are some things that are really easy in code, e.g. nested data structures, that are kind of a pain in the ass otherwise, e.g. nested forms. This lets me play around with new features that have a business-logic implementation but don’t yet have a nailed down UI.

Overall I’ve found it extremely productive and pretty indispensable as a solo dev! As mentioned, if I were working on a larger team and hadn’t written literally all of it myself, I’d exercise more caution on making sure that I don’t break something.

That said, I do have a scratch notebook that I use for all this that has this nice warning at the top:

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