piku, inspired by dokku, allows you do git push deployments to your own servers, no matter how small they are.
Demo
Documentation: Using | Install | Procfile | ENV | Examples | Roadmap | Contributing | LinuxConf Talk | Fast Web App Tutorial
Project Activity
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.
Deprecation Notices
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+.
Goals and Motivation
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.
Core values
- Must run on low end devices.
- Accessible to hobbyists and K-12 schools.
- ~1500 lines readable code.
- Functional code style.
- Few (single?) dependencies
- 12 factor app.
- Simplify user experience.
- Cover 80% of common use cases.
- Sensible defaults for all features.
- Leverage distro packages in Raspbian/Debian/Ubuntu (Alpine and RHEL support is WIP)
- Leverage standard tooling (
git,ssh,uwsgi,nginx). - Preserve backwards compatibility where possible
Using piku
piku supports a Heroku-like workflow:
- Create a
gitSSH remote pointing to yourpikuserver with the app name as repo name:git remote add piku [email protected]:appname. - Push your code:
git push piku master(or if you want to push a different branch than the current one usegit push piku release-branch-name). -
pikudetermines the runtime and installs the dependencies for your app (building whatever's required).- For Python, it segregates each app's dependencies into a
virtualenv. - For Go, it defines a separate
GOPATHfor each app. - For Node, it installs whatever is in
package.jsonintonode_modules. - For Java, it builds your app depending on either
pom.xmlorbuild.gradlefile. - For Ruby, it does
bundle installof your gems in an isolated folder.
- For Python, it segregates each app's dependencies into a
- It then looks at a
Procfilewhich is documented here and starts the relevant workers using uWSGI as a generic process manager. - You can optionally also specify a
releaseworker which is run once when the app is deployed. - You can then remotely change application settings (
config:set) or scale up/down worker processes (ps:scale). - You can also bake application and
nginxsettings into anENVfile 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.
Virtual Hosts and SSL
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.
Caching and Static Paths
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.
Supported Platforms
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.
Supported Runtimes
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.
Install
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:
- Use
piku-bootstrapto reconfigure a new or existing Ubuntu virtual machine. - Use
cloud-initwhen creating a new virtual machine or barebones automated deployment (check this repository for examples).
Manage - via the piku helper
To 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:
- If you
cdinto a project folder that has agitremote calledpikuthe 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
- If you are starting a new project,
piku initwill download exampleProcfileandENVfiles into the current folder:
$ piku init
Wrote ./ENV file.
Wrote ./Procfile.
- The
pikuhelper also lets you pass settings to the underlying SSH command:-tto run interactive commands remotely, and-Ato proxy authentication credentials in order to do remotegitpulls.
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