The state of Dev Mode

[Cafe137]

The bee dev command starts Bee with a mocked "backend" (~blockchain) and ephemeral/in-memory databases.

This dev mode, to my best knowledge, has never been announced or recommended as a supported, official mode (there are mentions in the docs though). Still, it has been used by quite a few developers and has simplified work many times. It is a simple alternative to testnet. The Bee endpoints are (mostly) available in dev mode, therefor tools and libraries can be developed for the Bee API without having to operate a real node or spend funds, and it comes with the additional benefit that response times are fast (e.g. instant "mocked" stamp purchase).

Over time, the usefulness of dev mode has deteriorated. After Bee version 1.6.2, feed support in dev mode was broken (possibly by no longer supporting SOC uploads). The POST chunks endpoint is not supported either. The mocked stamp values could be better (bucketDepth 16 instead of 0; currentPrice 24000 instead of 1 to give realistic batchTTL). Status endpoint not supported. And some others; this list is not intended to enumerate every difference.

I can only imagine that implementing all the internal systems twice (first for normal operation, then for the dev mode) is a huge effort, and maybe it is not worth it. However, I do wonder if there is a plan for the dev mode, ranging from retiring it, to bringing back at least some of the basics (SOCs, and therefor feeds probably having the highest yield).