(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?
Please be mindful of HDD spindown.
If your app frequently looks up stuff in a database and also has a bunch of files that are accessed on-demand, then please have an option to separate the data-directory from the appdata-directory.
A lot of stuff is self-hosted in homes and not everyone has the luxury of a dedicated server room.
Would you mind explaining more about this?
Take my setup for jellyfin as an example: There's a database located on the SSD and there's my media library located on an HDD array. The HDD is only spun up when jellyfin wants to access a media file.
In my previous setup, the nextcloud database was located on a HDD, which resulted in the HDD never spinning down, even if the actual files are never really accessed.
In immich, I wasn't able to find out if they have this separation, which is very annoying.
All this is moot, if you simply offer a tiny service which doesn't access big files that aren't stored on SSDs.
Exactly. Separate configuration and metadata from data. If the metadata DB is relatively small, I'll stick it on my SSD and backup to my HDD on a schedule.