Ask HN: What's the best way in 2018 to distribute a self-host web application? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's the best way in 2018 to distribute a self-host web application?

14 pointsmacca32110 comments

If I was to launch a SAAS product with a self-host option, what would be the best way to distribute it to customers?

Examples of things I'm concerned about are ease of installation, ease of deploying updates, ease of scaling for customers...

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If your web app is not too complex.

I really like to build self contained binary in Go.

All the code compile to a single binary file without any external dependencies. I put all my static files (html, css, js, imgs) inside this binary file using "bindata". If I really need a database, I'll use sqlite as a default (this could be configured to something else).

For updates, if you do not compress the binary file (upx), you can make a binary patch with "bsdiff"/"bspatch" (http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/). There is a Go library to do it dynamically https://github.com/kr/binarydist. So your app could be 50Mb, but updating it would be as simple as downloading a 400Kb patch and applying it (software can do it).

For schema migration, I like https://github.com/rubenv/sql-migrate which can be used as a library. Therefore, the migration can be part of the binary patch in an update.

So in the end, you only distribute a native executable file for whatever platform your customer is using.

I asked a similar question on two occasions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16250959

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14781420

The short answer is that no, there is no simple way to get users to self-host your software. Perhaps developers prefer it that way? It certainly helps keep the SaaS model going.

Remember that what a developer deems 'simple' matches no known definition of the word amongst ordinary users.

Take a look at how Koken handles their install routine. I found it very clean. You place a file in the root of your server, then load this in a browser. It checks permissions and technical requirements, then proceeds with the full download and installation if everything checks-out.

http://koken.me/

Updates are handled similarly -- the software alerts the admin to an available update within the admin console, and you can choose when to download and apply the patch.

https://www.packer.io/ - allows you to create images for a lot of platforms.

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-button is pretty good if you can "Heroku-ize" the product. Easy installation, updates, scaling for sure.

Perhaps build Docker images??

I am assuming anyone who is going to self-host will be able to use Docker. Perhaps will need to look up some documentation. But maybe I am missing something, why would it not be good way to distribute SaaS app?

Your suggestion makes sense, and docker images + docker compose config maybe simplest way to provide self-hosted option for web app that is already exist as cloud service. We used this approach to enable self-hosted option for our BI tool (SeekTable), and it works perfect for us.

use Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure or DigitalOcean you can run one or more instance and pay per use. it is easy to scale if you need.

other option is some cheep VPS hosting (~50$/y) but later you maybe need to migrate everything.

Sorry if I wasn't clear - I want to know how best to give software to others, so they can install it on their own machines.

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