piku
, inspired by dokku, allows you do git push
deployments to your own servers, no matter how small they are.
piku
is considered STABLE. It is actively maintained, but "actively" here means the feature set is pretty much done, so it is only updated when new language runtimes are added or reproducible bugs crop up.
It is currently being refactored to require Python 3.7 or above, since even though 3.8+ is now the baseline Python 3 version in Ubuntu LTS 20.04 and Debian 11 has already moved on to 3.9, there are no substantial differences between those versions.
Since most of its users run it on LTS distributions, there is no rush to introduce disruption. The current plan is to throw up a warning for older runtimes and do regression testing for 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10 (replacing the current bracket of tests from 3.5 to 3.8), and make sure we also cover Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 11 and Fedora 37+.
I kept finding myself wanting an Heroku/CloudFoundry-like way to deploy stuff on a few ARM boards and my Raspberry Pi cluster, but since dokku didn't work on ARM at the time and even docker
can be overkill sometimes, I decided to roll my own.
piku
is currently able to deploy, manage and independently scale multiple applications per host on both ARM and Intel architectures, and works on any cloud provider (as well as bare metal) that can run Python, nginx
and uwsgi
.
git
, ssh
, uwsgi
, nginx
).piku
piku
supports a Heroku-like workflow:
git
SSH remote pointing to your piku
server with the app name as repo name:
git remote add piku [email protected]:appname
.git push piku master
(or if you want to push a different branch than the current one use git push piku release-branch-name
).piku
determines the runtime and installs the dependencies for your app (building whatever's required).
virtualenv
.GOPATH
for each app.package.json
into node_modules
.pom.xml
or build.gradle
file.bundle install
of your gems in an isolated folder.Procfile
which is documented here and starts the relevant workers using uWSGI as a generic process manager.release
worker which is run once when the app is deployed.config:set
) or scale up/down worker processes (ps:scale
).nginx
settings into an ENV
file which is documented here.You can also deploy a gh-pages
style static site using a static
worker type, with the root path as the argument, and run a release
task to do some processing on the server after git push
.
piku
has full virtual host support - i.e., you can host multiple apps on the same VPS and use DNS aliases to access them via different hostnames.
piku
will also set up either a private certificate or obtain one via Let's Encrypt to enable SSL.
If you are on a LAN and are accessing piku
from macOS/iOS/Linux clients, you can try using piku/avahi-aliases
to announce different hosts for the same IP address via Avahi/mDNS/Bonjour.
Besides static sites, piku
also supports directly mapping specific URL prefixes to filesystem paths (to serve static assets) or caching back-end responses (to remove load from applications).
These features are configured by setting appropriate values in the ENV
file.
piku
is intended to work in any POSIX-like environment where you have Python, nginx
, uWSGI
and SSH: it has been deployed on Linux, FreeBSD, Cygwin and the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
As a baseline, it began its development on an original 256MB Rasbperry Pi Model B, and still runs reliably on it.
But its main use is as a micro-PaaS to run applications on cloud servers with both Intel and ARM CPUs, with Debian and Ubuntu Linux as target platforms.
piku
currently supports apps written in Python, Node, Clojure, Java and a few other languages (like Go) in the works.
But as a general rule, if it can be invoked from a shell, it can be run inside piku
.
piku
can manage multiple apps on a single machine, and all you need is a VPS, Raspberry Pi, or other server.
There are two main ways of deploying piku
onto a new server:
piku-bootstrap
to reconfigure a new or existing Ubuntu virtual machine.cloud-init
when creating a new virtual machine or barebones automated deployment (check this repository for examples).piku
helperTo make life easier you can also install the piku helper into your path (e.g. ~/bin
).
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/piku/piku/master/piku > ~/bin/piku && chmod 755 ~/bin/piku
This shell script simplifies working with multiple piku
remotes and applications:
cd
into a project folder that has a git
remote called piku
the helper will infer the remote server and app name and use them automatically:$ piku logs
$ piku config:set MYVAR=12
$ piku stop
$ piku deploy
$ piku destroy
$ piku # <- show available remote and local commands
piku init
will download example Procfile
and ENV
files into the current folder:$ piku init
Wrote ./ENV file.
Wrote ./Procfile.
piku
helper also lets you pass settings to the underlying SSH command: -t
to run interactive commands remotely, and -A
to proxy authentication credentials in order to do remote git
pulls.For instance, here's how to use the -t
flag to obtain a bash
shell in the app directory of one of your piku
apps:
$ piku -t run bash
Piku remote operator.
Server: [email protected]
App: dashboard
[email protected]:~/.piku/apps/dashboard$ ls
data ENV index.html package.json package-lock.json Procfile server.wisp