The command line option --dev appears in the release notes, and as a startup option, but it is not defined

[tomthetrainer]

Hi team,

I may find time to patch this on my own, but until then I just want to note.

The --dev option is not defined in the docs.

A search for "--dev"

"--dev" site:https://developers.eventstore.com/server/v24.6

Has 3 hits,

First Hit: https://developers.eventstore.com/server/v24.6/installation.html

Where we mention you can start it with --dev

EventStore.ClusterNode.exe --dev --db ./db --log ./logs

But what --dev does is not defined here.

Second Hit: https://developers.eventstore.com/server/v24.6/configuration.html

I do not see --dev there on the page, but I do see dev under the --what-if section here

https://developers.eventstore.com/server/v24.6/configuration.html#testing-the-configuration

Third Hit: https://developers.eventstore.com/server/v24.6/security.html#certificate-generation-tool

I see "dev" but no "--dev"

So I am fairly certain that the docs do not define what settings are configured when --dev is used on the command line.

The Fix:

Take the wording from the 22.10 release notes, and verify it is correct, and put it into the docs.

Here are the words source, https://www.eventstore.com/blog/22.10.0-release-notes#hs_cos_wrapper_name

We have introduced a new dev mode to make running a local dev instance of EventStoreDB easier. You can now run a secure single EventStoreDB node on localhost with the command:

./EventStore.ClusterNode.exe -–dev
This does a few things. It generates a self-signed dev certificate for the node if one isn’t already present, enables AtomPub over HTTP, enables system projections, and starts the secure EventStoreDB instance.

You can then browse to the admin UI or connect a gRPC client with very little hassle.

The benefit to this over insecure mode is that there are no extra configuration changes needed for your clients, and user management is enabled in secure mode.

The 20.6.0 release notes do not align with the 20.10, they mention in memory mode. https://www.eventstore.com/blog/event-store-20.6.0-release#development-mode

Currently the easiest way to run EventStoreDB is to run in Development mode. You can do this by running EventStoreDB with the --dev flag.

This configures EventStoreDB to:

Use an existing development certificate. This means that when running in development mode, you don’t need to specify a certificate at startup.
Run in memory. By default, development mode will not write any data to disk. You can change this behaviour by overriding the MemDb setting.

If I get around to making the patch, I will verify wether or not MemDB is set by dev mode

A nice complete solution would be a glossary of all the command line options available and what they do.