Automate deployments

[gedw99]

hey @pomdtr

The system looks like it’s ping great . The API looks really useful for small projects.

There are a few simple things we could do eventually to make deployments smoother .

cloudflare config , using their golang cli to automate setup of tunnel and domain .

Sidekick to auto are vps based setup and deployment. Does all the steps in the docs.

Hotfix so that binaries can easily be updated on your server , directly off a github release .

[gedw99]

https://github.com/MightyMoud/sidekick

It’s hard coded to install via docker and dock impose , so it’s more of a point of reference .

I wanted o PR it to make it more generic , so I could use mutagen

https://github.com/mutagen-io/mutagen

[pomdtr]

That's an excellent point! If you have some time to dedicate to it, you might be able to distribute this hypothetical cloudflare / vps integration using a smallweb plugin.

On my end, I'm probably going to dedicate the next few weeks into building smallweb cloud. I feel like these solutions are nice-to-have, but they do not solve the usability problem entirely. At the end of the day, there will still be frictions (creating a cloudflare account, buying a domain, generating a token...).

[gedw99]

ah yes plugins are the way to go. Are there any currently you can point me to ?

I will have a look at the cloud docs too.

[pomdtr]

Here is one allowing you to open an app in vscode

#!/bin/bash

set -e

SMALLWEB_DIR="$(smallweb config | jq -r .dir)"

# this text replacement trick will not be necessary in 0.15.0
code "${SMALLWEB_DIR/#\~/$HOME}/$1"

You can access the api endpoint using the smallweb api command (no need to authenticate).

Any language is supported, as long as you specify the correct shebang.

I would advice to use:

• bash for really simple scripts
• deno otherwise (as smallweb user already have it installed)

[gedw99]

ok plugin approach looks good. I like the shebang approach.

I need binaries along with my shebang to do this then. 2 binaries and a shebang to wrap it.

Maybe we should integrate into the small web pkg a simple deps system, so that a plug declares what it needs to run and the system pulls them down to where small web is installed, into a .deps folder.

The is easy to make idempotent too by just checking with "which" and "binary -version", so we can install the plugins binaries automatically on calling the plugin shebang.

I do this all the time with complex projects that have deps on deps ....

[pomdtr]

The beauty of this pattern is that you can use any package manager to install a binary in your $PATH (ex: npm, pip...).

I won't create a package manager just for smallweb plugins. If I were you I would, probably just instruct the user to install the appropriate binaries using error messages, or even do it for him as part of the script initialization.

[gedw99]

Right I see your point .

I will try out the current approach more and report back .

[gedw99]

Hey again,

I was just reviewing where everything is and saw your comment about "frictions (creating a cloudflare account, buying a domain, generating a token...)."

I agree. it's hard to remove all friction like this for end users, but I think you have heaps of opportunities to do that by adding a bit more to the CLI. You can have the CLI call other CLI too just to get it all working.

1. Use the cloudflare golang package to automate all the Cloudflare configuration: https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflare-go
2. Use the https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflared to automate the tunnel install. I already did this using make around your code anyway.
3. Use https://github.com/hetznercloud/cli to automate the VPS Setup.

Then you pretty much have all the third party bits automated. So it's a matter of dockerising this so that the exact same code that a Dev runs locally, can also be run on a Server.

1. Get a docker build going. This has the CLI, API and web GUI inside it.
2. Get the ssh into Hetzner working off the CLI to install docker and caddy and then install that docker onto Hetzner.

I am only picking hetzner because it's always the cheapest. Later others can be provided by am abstraction, but its a decent way to get going.

At this point there are only 2 external systems and they are 100% driven by having a token for each system.
The best you can do then, it in the web gui, to have a link to each HTTPS page where the user gets a token.

[pomdtr]

The issue with this approach is that it's a never-ending task to support custom providers, and it bloats the cli with a lot of additional packages. You're planning on using hetzner and cloudflare, but there is almost one setup per user in the few dozens of users I have.

I think a better approach would be to distribute smallweb as a docker container, and document how to integrate it with platforms like coolify or digital ocean app platform.

[pomdtr]

For comparison, here is what the smallweb cloud onboarding process will look like:

ssh #@ssh.smallweb.live # that's all!

[gedw99]

thanks for your feedback @pomdtr

I agree about the cloud providers and it being never ending.

I also agree that ssh and docker is the base way.

What I am suggesting is that from that base point Devs / Users can compose on top of that.
So for example, the hetzner CLI is dependency at Ops time, not Compile time.
So users can compose pipelines together using simple CLI with json out.
Its amazing how far a CLI with JSONOUT can go.

In my case I often deploy to fly, hetzer and Digital Ocean.
These all have a CLI, and so it's just a matter of composing pipelines on top of smallweb and thee CLI to achieve idempotent CI / Ops.

I just wanted to explain my approach and why JSONOUT is useful.

I can then write all these deployment aspects as plugins to SmallWeb ?