Podman Deployment #

This setup uses a Podman pod with two containers:

waffle pod
  ├── waffle app container, private 127.0.0.1:8080
  └── Caddy container, public :80 or :443

This keeps the app and Caddy separate while still making them easy to run together.

Local production-like test #

Install Podman first. On macOS this usually also requires starting the Podman machine.

brew install podman
podman machine init
podman machine start

Then from the repo root:

./deploy/podman-local.sh

Default URL:

http://127.0.0.1:8081

This flow was tested locally with Podman 5.8.2 on macOS.

For iPhone LAN testing, use your Mac's LAN IP:

http://<mac-lan-ip>:8081

Data is stored outside the containers by default:

.waffle-data/
  waffle.db
  videos/

Useful commands #

podman pod ps
podman ps --pod
podman logs waffle-local-app
podman logs waffle-local-caddy
podman pod rm -f waffle-local

Production notes #

Use deploy/Caddyfile.production.example as the starting point and replace:

waffle.example.com

with the real subdomain.

Recommended production env for the app container:

WAFFLE_ADDR=127.0.0.1:8080
WAFFLE_DB=/data/waffle.db
WAFFLE_VIDEOS_DIR=/data/videos
WAFFLE_PUBLIC_URL=https://waffle.example.com
WAFFLE_SECURE_COOKIES=true
WAFFLE_SESSION_MAX_AGE=2592000

Persist /data on the host and back it up regularly.

Why a pod instead of one container? #

A pod keeps Caddy and the Go app as separate processes/containers, but they share a network namespace. That means Caddy can reverse-proxy to the app at 127.0.0.1:8080, while only Caddy needs public ports.