(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?
This comment is a bit silly. Databases just make sense for many services, although many could just use sqlite which would be fine (and many do). Redis etc is usually optional and might increase performance in some cases.
I wouldn’t be a fan of something requiring docker, but it’s often just the easiest way to deploy these types of services (and the easiest way to install it as a user).
Anyway, I’ll echo that clear, up-to-date documentation is nice. I shouldn’t have to search through actual code or the bug/issues section to find current information (but I get this is very challenging). And I’d rather projects didn’t make Discord a source of documentation (especially not the primary one).
I’ll add that having a NixOS module is a big plus for me, but I don’t expect the developers themselves to maintain this.
Unless you are a business with millions of users, I would be really skeptical of redis improving performance. At the end of the day, any simple KV store can replace it. It’s not like postgres where having sqlite in it’s place means not only a different performance profile, but also different semantics, sql dialect, rpc protocol, etc