$ getent services gopher
  gopher               70/tcp

[0] https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy

You can still publish port numbers along with addresses in DNS though (SRV records).

The article is short; go read it then come back and delete.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

Sidenote: A good AI would interject, Clippy-like, "It looks like you're trying to recreate /etc/services. Would you like me to explain what that is?"

http:// means port 80 unless specified otherwise

https:// means port 443 unless specified otherwise

ftp:// means port 21 unless specified otherwise

sftp:// means port 22 unless specified otherwise

...

The practical solution for TFA is actually just an nginx server running on port 80 with proxy_pass

    location /blog/ {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000 ;
    }

    location /tensorboard/ {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6006;
    }

People shit-talk container orchestration systems like Kubernetes, but if anything they greatly simplified (if not completely eliminated) the need for this sort of network bookkeeping.

But go ahead. /etc/services, please, share with me how it's setup to do thing likes create the HTPS and makes it trusted and sets up the domain. Go ahead.

Go ahead. You can ONLY use /etc/services.

Or, you are admit you don't actually have a clue as to what /etc/services does.

i dont know why people keep insiting on that file while there are perfectly fine commands to pull from your boxes what is holding what port.

that is all besides the point though if you look at what you should be doing and keeping all this information in some kind of asset management system from which you can deploy things (which is kinda what k8s and docker etc. try to do (miserably)).

unless you are binding stuff to random ports on random boxes there is no need to do any of it at runtime and you can just consult your bookkeeping (for which etc services lacks a lot of details to use...)

https://portless.sh/

Example from the website:

- "dev": "next dev" # http://localhost:3000

+ "dev": "portless myapp next dev" # https://myapp.localhost

That would work if your goal was to route traffic to localhost.

What if it isn't?

There are reasons why the likes of example.com exists.

Something involving socat, an any-IP / TCP routing rule, a VPS or other machine with a ipv6 /64 and plenty of duct-tape.

You'd get an application sitting on port 80 accessible via some unique ipv6 address (in the /64) on a tcp port 80. They needn't be the same port number but it would make it easier.

anki?...

That seems to run orthogonal to this. The primary benefit I see here is not having to care at all what ports apps are actually starting on. Just run them, and access them by name. Same as a regular website on the internet where one doesn't care about the IP.

> How much care would they have possibly put into reviewing

Just enough to ensure that it works for them, which is what really matters. Others go in knowing that as well, and add/change that base to their own preference. That's the world we're now in.

Super simple. (although I use rewrites at my dns layer for the whole local lan, but whatever)

It also solves issues my password manager has with multiple services on the one host but with different ports, but putting each on their own 2nd level domain.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452515

For example, I had never heard about etc/services until 2 minutes ago