Adding some thoughts to my own post - I have experimented with dockerize.io and so far the $2 plan (which so far I haven't been charged for) has been quite adequate for hosting something simple (and I suspect the $5 plan would do the trick as well).
It does get a bit more pricey when you add a database and unlimited traffic (60GB MySQL Database: 4GB, 1000m + no traffic + 60GB persistance + 100 mb logs = $26/m) - but even then thats pretty good.
It was relatively easy to do (doesn't have native Github integration yet, but has a cli for easy deployment) , and given what Esteban mentioned of his experience - this seems worth pursuing for ease of deployment/maintenance.
I did find Pablo's instructions were a bit limited - in particular covering a private repo (and how Pharo and the BA docker image give no output on credential failure - I've raised an issue on BA github, but may be a pharo thing - not yet sure - but it is quite easy to overcome). It also doesn't cover safe credential storage and best practices etc. (so hopefully a future article from someone more experienced in this?)
I'm curious if others have experienced anything similar they can share? I am a bit nervous the dockerize.io has little history (been around since 2019 allegedly) - but for my experimentation its fine. Others may need more, and I'm wondering where to help document this as deployment is a big stumbling block - that we actually can handle quite well with recent tooling.
In this vein - I wonder where SmalltalkCI sits? Do you need it for a plain Pharo app - you just need to grep the output of Metacello and your test runner - but perhaps it does this better (I can see the need for building multiple platforms etc).
Tim
On Fri, 2 Apr 2021, at 10:32 AM, Tim Mackinnon wrote:
Thanks Sanjay - you have reminded me that I have some similar notes somewhere (now located) that did the command line foo to get things running - looking at mine there was quite a big of dance to provide a way to gracefully stop and start the image so that you can easily and automatically redeploy your changes (read: use Github actions or Gitlab CI).
So I���m curious on whether Docker is now sufficiently stable stable/easy/cheap to make it a viable alternative - and whether that is also cost efficient.
Pablo wrote a recent blog post on running Pharo in Docker using the BA images -
https://thepharo.dev/2021/02/24/running-pharo-9-in-docker/ - but while easy on the surface, if anything goes wrong - there seems to be very little debug output to know what has happened (I���ll post separately on this - as I���m looking at comparing options here).
With Docker options, I notice that
dockerize.io (not used, just a quick search) - has a micro plan for $2/m - but is 500mb ram enough (there is a $5 one for 1gm ram).
Or - I stick with DigitalOcean and roll my own like before - and perhaps that has got a bit simpler.
I���m still curious what the wider community is doing.
Tim
Hi Tim
Here are my notes on installing Pharo in a DigitalOcean Ubuntu droplet.
I usually go thru a Windows Command prompt box having installed xfec4 in the ubuntu droplet, but the command line connect and graphical remote may be easier for a Linux users. my ssh public key is also in the DO droplet
Now the first step for me is a installing Pharo launcher thru command line and then everything is thru graphical interface
Installing and checking Pharo-Launcher, Installing Pharo 8 64 bit from
pharo.org (instructions as on
Pharo.org)
1. In Windows 10 command prompt connect thru > ssh root@<Droplet-ip>
2. cd
4. unzip pharo-launcher.zip
or thru the GUI-> extract here
(pharo-launcher files will be extracted in ./pharo-launcher)
Now while connected to the linux graphical interface thru windows remote terminal and in the GUI
5. Create a icon on desktop thru right-click ���Create Launcher��� for pharo-launcher
6. Create pharo images thru pharo-launcher
hope this is of use
Hi everyone - its been a few year since I last hosted a little Pharo web app - and the last time I did, Sven pointed me to DigitalOcean and creating a tiny instance and configuring an Ubuntu server and then copying a pharo image on to that. It recall it wasn���t too bad, albeit a bit fiddly���
Now several years later - I can���t recall the exact steps, and vaguely recall there was something about 32bit vs 64bit setup etc - but am wondering if things have advanced a bit and whether its much simpler these days? I���ve seen references to Docker images for Pharo, and am wondering if now that is a prime time way to easily get a small demo application up and running with minimal fuss.
Does anyone have advice - or something to point me to?
Ideally I want to hook something up in Gitlab CI do deploy to this thing automatically (this is where I got to a few years ago - but in picking things back up I am hoping this has all got much simpler).
Tim