.local is reserved for mDNS. I'm not sure why you can't just use the host's real...

jkrems · on April 1, 2015

Because you might want to have multiple vhosts running on localhost, separated by hostname.

hobarrera · on April 1, 2015

If you host is, say "zeus.barrera.io" you can use:

test-service-1.zeus.barrera.io dummy-server.zeus.barrera.i

Etc. No need to create new (possible conflicting, definitely not future proof) TLDs.

jkrems · on April 1, 2015

It's not about shared hosts (at least if I'm understanding the topic correctly) but about /etc/hosts entries on your local machine for your local machine. As in:

    my-test-thing-a.dev 127.0.0.1
    my-test-thing-b.dev 127.0.0.1
    my-test-thing-c.dev 127.0.0.1

Buying an actual registered domain for that sounds like it would be even more confusing than using an unregistered TLD because it makes it hard to tell which hostnames are expected to work across machines and which are strictly "works on my machine".