setup-buildx-action VS Dokku

Good luck running this locally. There's no script code to speak of, just references to external "actions" and parameters (for example, https://github.com/docker/setup-buildx-action).

Some CI platforms are just a simple glue layer (Gitlab CI - which I prefer - is one of them), but in most cases Github CI is not. Maybe it adds to the author frustration?

Set up Docker Buildx: We will use the docker/setup-buildx-action action to set up Docker Buildx.

There’s an amazing docker/bake-action which makes it insanely easy to build all of your containers in the most optimal way. Since we’ve set the group “default” block in the docker-bake.hcl, config is very minimal. One step in your GitHub Action workflow file will build all of your images and will push all of your cache layers, tag all of your containers, and push all your final images. You’ll still have to do things like checkout the code and don’t forget that you’ll want to use the docker/setup-buildx-action since bake is a buildx feature. There’s one quick gotcha for the actual docker/bake-action. We don’t want to push PR builds and we don’t want to pollute the cache with PR builds.

To be clear, that article does NOT provide a solution for avoiding QEMU. I suggested it because it describes "the hard way" to get a single image multi-arch image. The github action crazy-max/ghaction-docker-buildx has been archived and replaced by docker/setup-qemu-action and docker/setup-buildx-action, which it seems like you were already using.

Third step is docker/setup-buildx-action configures buildx, which is a Docker CLI plugin that provides enhanced build capabilities.

We then use the docker/setup-buildx-action action to initialize an environment to build Docker images:

The setup-buildx-action configures Docker Buildx to create a builder instance for running the image build. The following step build-push-action, makes use of that instance to build your Docker image. The build-push-action supports all of the features provided by BuildKit out of the box. In our simple example, we are only specifying the Docker context, but more advanced features like SSH, secrets, and build args are supported.

# Get the repository's code - name: Checkout uses: actions/checkout@v2 # https://github.com/docker/setup-qemu-action - name: Set up QEMU uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v1 # https://github.com/docker/setup-buildx-action - name: Set up Docker Buildx id: buildx uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v1

docker/setup-buildx-action@v1 - we use it to setup the docker builder

Would be great to see a comparison to some better known alternatives like

- Dokku [0]

- CapRover [1]

[0] https://dokku.com/

[1] https://caprover.com/

If you want to dig into it anyways, Dokku is an interesting mention. They provide an Open Source PaaS that you can install on your server to simplify self hosting containers.

When I came across Coolify, I thought of giving it a try. I am aware of Dokku, but I never really tried it because it doesn't have a UI. I work primarily as a UI developer, so having a nice UI to work with is a plus for me.

I run all my projects on Dokku. It’s a sweet spot for me between a barebones VPS with Docker Compose and something a lot more complicated like k8s. Dokku comes with a bunch of solid plugins for databases that handle backups and such. Zero downtime deploys, TLS cert management, reverse proxies, all out of the box. It’s simple enough to understand in a weekend and has been quietly maintained for many years. The only downside is it’s meant mostly for single server deployments, but I’ve never needed another server so far.

https://dokku.com/

Yeah there are a bunch of selfhostable things:

Caprover (https://caprover.com/)

Dokku (https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

But people still choose Netlify and Vercel for ease of use I think.

Maybe we need something that's just Netlify. The closest I've seen to the "right" UX is Ness:

https://ness.sh

The modern iteration of these tools has taken the developer experience learnings from the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, and will bring them to your own VM, giving you your own personal PaaS. Example of this include Dokku, Coolify, Caprover, Cloud66 and many more!

Based on the fact that your ideal is to have a similar experience to heroku than managing your own server setting up reverse proxies take a look at these options:

1) https://dokku.com - lets you turn your light sail instance basically into heroku

2) https://render.com

3) https://fly.io

4) If you have aws credits this is their heroku equivalent: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk

above is not what I do but would be the options I would pursue if I understand your preference and requirement correctly.

All in all, I really recommend trying out Dokku if you are a developer interested in hosting your own projects. It makes it super easy to get everything you need to get up and running without having to worry about the specifics. And the price is impossible to beat!

The installation instructions are on the frontpage of our site. Thats basically all you need to do to install Dokku. As far as using it, we have a simplified tutorial here.