HACKER Q&A
📣 tikkun

How can I create a hosted shell?


I have a python program. I run it locally on my machine.

What I'd like to do is to be able to allow other people to run the same program, without them having to set up the dev environment.

Basically a remote shell, with one instance per user/session.

My ideal is I can do:

1. Upload my python program and directory with related files

2. Click share

3. Now someone can go to a url, and they'll see a blank shell, and if they typed python3 my_program.py it'd run just like it does on my local machine.

I don't think an AWS box will work because I don't want users to be able to access the output of other users.

Is there a super simple solution for this, or would I need to build it?

  👤 tikkun Accepted Answer ✓
Specifically, I don't want to need to build any user interface, I want the terminal to be the user interface, and "just work" the same way it does on my local machine.

I've seen xterm which is nice for the UI, though I'm looking for something I can just drop in my python program and it'll work.

👤 rudasn
How about having a server that accepts a POST request (eg at /my_program) that once called executes your program on that server (or any other server, or a container or whatever) and streams stdout and stderr to the response?