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Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

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Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#101

Post by mherrmann »

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficult to debug and maintain, and tests were slow, making me less productive.

As the reason for using Docker, the author writes "The benefits of matching your development environment to your production one cannot be overstated". Again in my personal experience, this simply isn't an issue. Just use the same Python version and a roughly similar PostgreSQL version in development and production, and you're good to go.

In short, I feel OP would be better off without Docker. Once you know the rest of the stack well enough, you can set it up in dev and prod in such a way that you can trust that what works in dev will also work on prod. I've been doing this without problems for years.

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#102

Post by leetrout »

mherrmann wrote: post #101

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficul…

Docker on Mac and Windows is so slow when used for a development environment but there are enough differences that it makes it worth using. It’s more portable than VMs (vagrant and such) and if you’re using your CI pipeline to build an image then deployment is a snap.

I much prefer building a Docker image and pushing it somewhere compared to tarballs of the repo or repo access. I would rather build rpms or debs than just push the repo around. Container tooling makes that kind of stuff nice in my opinion.

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#103

Post by mherrmann »

leetrout wrote: post #102
mherrmann wrote: post #101

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficul…

Docker on Mac and Windows is so slow when used for a development environment but there are enough differences that it makes it worth using. It’s more portable than VMs (vagrant and such) and if you’re using your CI pipeline to build an image then deployment is a snap. I much prefer building a Docker image and pushing it somewhere compared to tarballs of the repo or repo access. I would rather build rpms or debs than…

You agree that Docker is "so slow" and point to its benefits for preventing differences between dev and prod. But you don't mention what those differences are. What are they?

I also don't see why you'd use a CI pipeline for simple projects where you are typically the only developer. Run tests locally, if everything is fine push to prod.

I use git with a small script to roll out to production. When I execute the script on the server, it stops all services, pulls the latest code from Git, applies Django migrations, and starts everything up again. I use desk [1] to make this as simple as a single `release` command in my local shell.

[1]: https://github.com/jamesob/desk

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#104

Post by ahmedalsudani »

mherrmann wrote: post #101

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficul…

Allow me to offer a counterpoint.

Docker is useful for reasons besides scale. It allows you to (kind of) declaratively define your environment and spin it up in any number of different scenarios.

It allows you to ship all your dependencies with your app and not worry about getting the host machine properly configured beyond setting up Docker and/or Kubernetes.

Have other apps you want to host on the same set of machines? No problem.

When you you pair that with something like alpine Linux, you’re getting a whole lot almost for free.

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#105

Post by GiorgioG »

mherrmann wrote: post #101

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficul…

If you know Docker, and use it daily - it’s a no brainer. For me it’s an easy choice - I dev on a Desktop PC but when I’m on the go I’m on a MacBook. No need to customize environment config with docker. What’s your disaster recovery plan if your server tips over? With docker it’s relatively easy. I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but in my experience it makes my life simpler.

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#106

Post by leetrout »

rufius wrote: post #94
treis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Honestly, frameworks like Rails or Django are an anti-pattern for Golang. Which is, IMHO, the biggest thing holding Go back. The standard library does a lot but a lot is also missing. Authentication, db migration, admin panels, ORM, Asset pipeline and probably more. It's a lot of custom work to do or pulling in various libraries.

I have mixed feelings on this. I go back and forth on whether I agree or disagree. For example, once an application becomes sufficiently complex, I've found ORM's to be more of a hindrance. The abstraction gets leaky and I end up having to tune custom queries to get around some pathological edge case. That said - most of my experience is with Rails and a lot of the implicit nature of it is problematic. On the other h…

Rails implicit magic is so painful.

I’ll disagree and agree on the ORM front.

A good ORM has a clean escape handle for tuning hot spots and otherwise saves you time with boilerplate queries.

Add a new field? Update the class / structs, generate a migration and move on. Without the ORM you write the migration yourself, you have to find and update all the queries and if you’re centralizing all your query building then you’re just using your own ORM-light without the battle hardened trials of other users using something open source and popular.

I insisted we use sql alchemy and alembic in our latest Go project — and I’m eyeballing Buffalo’s Soda and Fizz as a replacement.

Its generally just nerdcore navel gazing to insist on raw sql across a project in my opinion. Especially web apps / SaaS where you churn tables a lot. Simple migrations from simple models is what I love about Django and Flask/Fast API with SQL Alchemy.

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#107

Post by mherrmann »

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #104
mherrmann wrote: post #101

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficul…

Allow me to offer a counterpoint. Docker is useful for reasons besides scale. It allows you to (kind of) declaratively define your environment and spin it up in any number of different scenarios. It allows you to ship all your dependencies with your app and not worry about getting the host machine properly configured beyond setting up Docker and/or Kubernetes. Have other apps you want to host on the same set of machi…

How many scenarios do you typically need to spin up your environment in?

I achieve the same (defining the environment) by pinning Python dependencies via requirements.txt and virtual environments. And I have an installation script, like a Dockerfile but just an executable bash script, that installs PostgreSQL etc, pulls the code from GitHub and starts up the server. I can upload this to a clean Debian installation to set up the server, with a well-defined stack, in minutes.

> Have other apps you want to host on the same set of machines

I don't. I just use one $5 per month Linode for each SaaS. (Or bigger Linodes as the projects get more users. My biggest single box currently serves ~100,000 users.)

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#108

Post by mherrmann »

GiorgioG wrote: post #105
mherrmann wrote: post #101

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficul…

If you know Docker, and use it daily - it’s a no brainer. For me it’s an easy choice - I dev on a Desktop PC but when I’m on the go I’m on a MacBook. No need to customize environment config with docker. What’s your disaster recovery plan if your server tips over? With docker it’s relatively easy. I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but in my experience it makes my life simpler.

How do you debug (in dev or prod), or in production, do things such as inspecting log files, monitoring system resources, running necessary commands if there is something urgent...? In my experience, Docker just makes everything more tedious without tangible benefits. I personally lose nothing by not using Docker and am much faster in everything I do.

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#109

Post by scns »

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #104
mherrmann wrote: post #101

I don't get why people use Docker for "small SaaS apps" where "scale is not an issue". You can run everything without Docker to remove an extra level of indirection. I've been doing that exact thing with a very similar Django stack for years. Not once have I missed Docker. On the other hand, I have taken over SaaS projects where the (unnecessary) usage of Docker made it more expensive to host, decidedly more difficul…

Allow me to offer a counterpoint. Docker is useful for reasons besides scale. It allows you to (kind of) declaratively define your environment and spin it up in any number of different scenarios. It allows you to ship all your dependencies with your app and not worry about getting the host machine properly configured beyond setting up Docker and/or Kubernetes. Have other apps you want to host on the same set of machi…

Python apps have worse performance, bigger image size and longer build times on Alpine Linux:

https://pythonspeed.com/articles/alpine-docker-python/

Re: Docker, Django, Traefik, and IntercoolerJS: My go-to stack for building a SaaS

#110

Post by riverdroid »

hsaliak wrote: post #63
andrewzah wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be nice if everyone used that. When I looked at the source code for mayan-edms, they weren't using that. Apache airflow? Doesn't use it. Jupyterhub? Doesn't use it. I was happy to see projects like Zulip using this, but if it's optional then I can't rely on people actually using it. It's the same thing with ruby/sorbet.

That’s shifting the goalposts a bit. You can use optional typing in your project as it’s scales, and there are plenty of projects that have been stable for what they do through other testing. Pick dependencies carefully and use typing as needed

I'd say typing is even more important when you are using other people's code with your code. It's also a huge productivity boost too when the relevant methods and types are available to you, the editor almost writes the code itself!
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