Deploying a redbean app to Fly#

redbean is a fascinating project - it provides a web server in a self-contained executable which you can add assets (or dynamic Lua code) to just by zipping them into the same binary package.

I decided to try running it on Fly. Here’s the recipe that worked for me.

The Dockerfile#

I copied this Dockerfile, unmodified, from https://github.com/kissgyorgy/redbean-docker/blob/master/Dockerfile-multistage by György Kiss:

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FROM alpine:latest as build
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ARG DOWNLOAD_FILENAME=redbean-original-2.0.8.com
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RUN apk add --update zip bash
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RUN wget https://redbean.dev/${DOWNLOAD_FILENAME} -O redbean.com
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RUN chmod +x redbean.com
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# normalize the binary to ELF
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RUN sh /redbean.com --assimilate
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# Add your files here
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COPY assets /assets
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WORKDIR /assets
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RUN zip -r /redbean.com *
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# just for debugging purposes
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RUN ls -la /redbean.com
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RUN zip -sf /redbean.com
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FROM scratch
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COPY --from=build /redbean.com /
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CMD ["/redbean.com", "-vv", "-p", "80"]

It uses a multi-stage build to download redbean, copy in the contents of your assets/ folder, zip those back up and then create a TINY container from scratch that copies in just that executable.

I made an assets/ folder with something fun in it (a copy of my Datasette Lite app) like this:

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mkdir assets
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cd assets
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wget https://lite.datasette.io/index.html
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wget https://lite.datasette.io/webworker.js

Deploying to Fly#

First I needed to create a new application. I ran this:

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fly apps create redbean-on-fly

Then I needed a fly.toml file. I created this one (copied from a previous example, but I updated the internal server port and the name):

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app = "redbean-on-fly"
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kill_signal = "SIGINT"
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kill_timeout = 5
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[[services]]
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  internal_port = 80
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  protocol = "tcp"
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  [services.concurrency]
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    hard_limit = 25
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    soft_limit = 20
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  [[services.ports]]
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    handlers = ["http"]
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    port = "80"
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  [[services.ports]]
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    handlers = ["tls", "http"]
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    port = "443"
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  [[services.tcp_checks]]
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    interval = 10000
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    timeout = 2000
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    grace_period = "10s"

Finally, I deployed the app by running this in the same directory as fly.toml:

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fly deploy

This uploaded the Dockerfile and assets/ folder to Fly, ran the build there, then deployed the result.