Deployment & configuration seems unnecessarily complex

[ixxie]

Just dropping this to team as a perspective, since I recently deployed Semapps.

The process outlined in the deploy readme is roughly as follows:

1. Copy the deploy folder somewhere on your server
2. Edit the docker-compose.yml files as well as 3 seperate .env.local to set various deployment parameters
3. Run docker compose build and docker compose up -d

I understood from @srosset81 that part of the motivation here was to allow the loading of custom files to the containers from the folders.

It feels like a weird way to deploy an app. As a simple step from the current setup towards a more streamlined and - in my opinion - idiomatic way of deploying compose apps, I would suggest the following changes:

1. Centralize all deployment parameters into env vars that are loaded centrally through docker-compose.yml into containers
2. To deploy the app, the user needs to only copy the docker-compose.yml file
3. The user can then pass all parameters through a single .env file or by setting environment variables in the host system
4. If additional data needs to be passed into containers, the user could mount volumes to them, possibly configurable through environment variables
5. Running the app is done as before: docker compose up -d (docker compose build can be removed from the readme since this happens automatically in compose anyway if needed).

This is a matter of taste and experience of course, but this approach is more in line with deployment strategies I've personally seen so far.

[srosset81]

Personnally, I create a (private) repo for all my deployments.
So I copy the deploy folder (only), make the changes, and then push everything to the repo. I then clone it on the server.
I don't think it's a good practice to edit the env variables directly on the server, because if the server disappears, you lose all your configurations.

[ixxie]

This is true, but it doesn't invalidate my argument that configuration is needlessly complex. The simplifications I propose work equally well when stored in a git repository.

[Tonfa]

@srosset81 how complex would it be to do that? I'm thinking it might bring a good Return on Investment before Regen4All deployment.

[srosset81]

@Tonfa It's not complex but it will take some time. If you want to apply Matan suggestions, go for it :-)

[Tonfa]

@Tonfa It's not complex but it will take some time. If you want to apply Matan suggestions, go for it :-)

Sounds exactly like the internationalization 😁
If someone give me one example for a file I can replicate @srosset81 @VincentFarcy