base on Bare metal to production ready in mins; your own fly server on your VPS. <div align="center"> <div> <img width="110px" src="https://emoji.aranja.com/static/emoji-data/img-apple-160/1f91c-1f3fb.png"> <img width="110px" src="https://emoji.aranja.com/static/emoji-data/img-apple-160/1f91b-1f3fb.png"> </div> Bare metal to production ready in mins; imagine fly.io on your VPS <div> <img width="600px" src="/demo/imgs/hero.png"> </div>    </div> ## Features - 👍 One command VPS setup (docker, traefik, sops, age) - 💻 deploy any application from a dockerfile - ✊ Zero downtime deployment - 🌏 High availability and load balancing - 🔒 Zero config SSL Certs - ✅ Connect domains or use sslip.io out of the box - 🔥 Built in integration with SOPS - 🛸 Escape the vendorlock forever ## Motivation I'm tired of the complexity involved in hosting my side projects. While some platforms, like Fly.io, stand out in the crowded field of Heroku replacements, I believe a simple VPS can be just as effective. That's why I created Sidekick: to make hosting side projects as straightforward, affordable, and production-ready as possible. You'll be surprised how much traffic a $8/month instance on DigitalOcean can handle. ## Installation Using brew: ```bash brew install sidekick ``` NOTE: Sidekick uses `brew` later on to handle installing `sops` on your local. So `brew` is a requirement at this point. Sidekick will throw an error if `brew` is not found. You can install `brew` from [here](https://brew.sh/). ## Usage Sidekick helps you along all the steps of deployment on your VPS. From basic setup to zero downtime deploys, we got you! ✊ First you need a VPS with Ubuntu LTS. I recommend DigitalOcean. Hetzner also gets very good reviews. You can host your own silicon too. As long as you have a public IP address you can use Sidekick. Just make sure the following is true: - VPS running Ubuntu - LTS recommended - SSH Key available on your machine to login to VPS. That's it! ### VPS Setup <div align="center" > <img width="600px" src="/demo/imgs/init.png"> </div> First you need to setup your VPS. To do this you need to run: ```bash sidekick init ``` Then you need to enter the following: - IP Address of your VPS - An email address to use for setting up SSL certs After that Sidekick will setup many things on your VPS - Usually takes around 2 mins. If you run this command once more and enter a different IP Address, Sidekick will warn you that you are overriding the current config with a prompt. You can use flags instead. Read more [in the docs](https://www.sidekickdeploy.com/docs/command/init/). <details> <summary>What does Sidekick do when I run this command?</summary> * Login with `root` user * Make a new user `sidekick` and grant sudo access * Logout from `root` and login with `sidekick` * Disable login with `root` user - security best practice * Update and upgrade your Ubuntu system * Install `sops` and copy over the public key to your sidekick config file * Use `age` to make secret and public keys to use later for encrypting env file. * Send public key back to host machine to be used later for encryption * Install Docker * Add user sidekick to docker group * Setup Traefik and SSL certs on your VPS </details> <details> <summary>Which SSH key will Sidekick use to login?</summary> Sidekick will look up the default keys in your default .ssh directory in the following order: - id_rsa.pub - id_ecdsa.pub - id_ed25519.pub Sidekick will also get all keys from the `ssh-agent` and try them as well. If you want to use a custom key and not a default one, you would need to add the to your agent first by running `ssh-add KEY_FILE` </details> Read more details about flags and other options for this command [on the docs](https://www.sidekickdeploy.com/docs/command/init/) ### Launch a new application <div align="center" > <img width="600px" src="/demo/imgs/launch.png"> </div> In your application folder, make sure you have a working `Dockerfile` that you can build and run. Also make sure you know at which port your app is expecting to receive traffic. Then run: ```bash sidekick launch ``` Then you need to enter the following: - Url friendly name of your app - if you opt to use `sslip.io` domain for testing this would be your subdomain - HTTP exposed port for your app to get requests - Sidekick will scan your docker file to try to extract this number and default it. - Domain at which you want this application to be reachable - If you choose your own domain make sure to point the domain to your VPS IP address; otherwise we default to `sslip.io` domain so you can play around. - If you have any `env` file with secrets in it. Sidekick will attempt to find `.env` file in the root of your folder. Sidekick will use `sops` to encrypt your env file and inject the values securely at run time. Should take around 2 more mins to be able to visit your application live on the web if all goes well. <details> <summary>What does Sidekick do when I run this command</summary> * Build your docker image locally for linux * Move the docker image to your VPS directly * Encrypt your env file, if available and push it to your VPS * Use sops to decrypt your env file and start and env with the values injected * Spin up your docker image using docker compose and route traffic to it using Traefik on the specified port </details> ### Deploy a new version <div align="center" > <img width="600px" src="/demo/imgs/deploy.png"> </div> With your application deployed, it's super simple to deploy a new version. At any point any time you need to only run: ```bash sidekick deploy ``` That's all. It won't take long, we use cache from earlier docker images, your latest version should be up soon. Sidekick will deploy the new version without any downtime - you can see more in the source code. This command will also do a couple of things behind the scenes. You can check that below <details> <summary>What does Sidekick do when I run this command</summary> * Build your docker image locally for linux * Compare your latest env file checksum for changes from last time you deployed your application. * If your env file has changed, sidekick will re-encrypt it and replace the encrypted.env file on your server. * Deploy the new version with zero downtime deploys so you don't miss any traffic. </details> ### Deploy a preview environment/app <div align="center" > <img width="600px" src="/demo/imgs/preview.png"> </div> Sidekick also allows you to deploy preview apps at any point from your application. Preview apps are attached to your commit hash and require a clean git tree before you can initiate them. Once you have a clean git tree, you can run the following command to deploy a preview app: ```bash sidekick deploy preview ``` <details> <summary>What does Sidekick do when I run this command</summary> * Build your docker image locally for linux * Tag the new image with the short checksum of your git commit * Encrypt your env file, if available and push it to your VPS * Add a new folder inside your app folder called "preview" where Sidekick will store and manage all your preview deployments * Deploy a new version of your app reachable on a short hash based subdomain </details> ## Inspiration - https://fly.io/ - https://kamal-deploy.org/ ## Vision Simple CLI tool that can help you: - Setup your VPS - Deploy all your side projects on a single VPS - Load balance multiple container per project - Deploy new versions with Zero downtime - Deploy preview environments with ease - Manage env secrets in a secure way - Connect any number of domains and subdomains to your projects with ease ## Remove sidekick You can easily remove sidekick if you hate it. ```bash brew uninstall sidekick ``` --- ## Roadmap I still have a couple more feature I want to add here. Also considering some of those to be on a paid version. - ✅ Preview env deployments - A way to deploy more complicated projects defined in docker compose file - Better zero downtime deploys with watchtower - Firewall setup - Managing multiple VPSs - Easy way to deploy databases with one command - TUI for monitoring your VPS - Streaming down compose logs - ala `fly logs` - Auto deploy on image push - to work with CICD better - Git hooks setup for managing migrations and other concerns ", Assign "at most 3 tags" to the expected json: {"id":"12133","tags":[]} "only from the tags list I provide: []" returns me the "expected json"