(This is a repost of this reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1fbv41n/what_are_the_things_that_makes_a_selfhostable/, I wanna ask this here just in case folks in this community also have some thoughts about it)

What are the things that makes a selfhostable app/project project good? Maybe another way to phrase this question is, what are the things that makes a project easier to self-host?

I have been developing an application that focuses on being easy to selfhost. I have been looking around for existing and already good project such as paperless-ngx, Immich, etc.

From what I gather the most important thing are:

  • Good docs, this is probably the most important. The developer must document how to self-host
  • Less runtime dependency–I’m not sure about this one, but the less it depends on other services the better
  • Optional OIDC–I’m even less sure about this one, and I’m also not sure about implementing this feature on my own app as it’s difficult to develop. It seems that after reading this subreddit/community, I concluded that lots of people here prefer to separate identity/user pool and app service. This means running a separate service for authentication and authorization.

What do you think? Another question is, are there any more good project that can be used as a good example of selfhostable app?

Thank you

Some redditors responded on the post:

  • easy to install, try, and configure with sane defaults
  • availabiity of image on dockerhub
  • screenshots
  • good GUI

I also came across this comment from Hacker News lately, and I think about it a lot

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40523806

This is what self-hosted software should be. An app, self-contained, (essentially) a single file with minimal dependencies.

Not something so complex that it requires docker. Not something that requires you to install a separate database. Not something that depends on redis and other external services.

I’ve turned down many self-hosted options due to the complexity of the setup and maintenance.

Do you agree with this?

  • mel@jlai.luEnglish
    3·
    5 days ago

    I totally disagree with the quote from hackernews. Having the option to use sqlite is nice to test it, but going with postgresql or mariadb allows you to have better performance if you use rdbms. Also, packaging with containers allows to have one standardized image for support if some third party packaging (from a distro repo) is bugging to test it further. To me, a good gui really depends on what service is provided. For kanidm (IAM), I don’t care this much of a web admin panel, the cli is really intuitive and if you need some graph views of your users, you can generate some diagram files. Considering OIDC/LDAP, I’d rather have OIDC implemented for two reasons : I can point my users to the (really minimalist) kanidm ui where they have a button for each app allowed. Also, the login informations are only stored in kanidm, no spreading of login password.

    I saw a comment about not needing to rely on many third services but I partly disagree with it. Using nextcloud as a mixed example, using elastic search for full text search is better than reimplementing it, but the notify_push should not be as separated as it is (it is here because I understood, apache-php and websockets does not mix well).

    All in all, the main criterias for me are :

    • SSO with OIDC, but ldap is good enough
    • Good documentation
    • easy deployment to test, prod deployment can be more advanced
    • Not reimplement the weel eg if you need full text search, meilisearch or elastic can do it better than you will, so don’t try to much (a simple grep for a test instance is enough)
    • If you need to store files, having remote stores is nice to have (webdav or s3)