How to make a self-hosted app built using Spin shareable?

[akulmehta]

Let's say I have built an application which uses Spin (Laravel) and I would like to make it open source, such that anyone can clone the repository and self-host that application. What files should I add to the gitignore to not commit to the repository so that they are not copying any of my infrastructure files?

My understanding (and I am really naive about these things) is to just add .infrastructure to the gitignore file - but is there any other files which should also be part of the gitignore (apart from the obvious like .env and vendor)?

Also, in such a case, if a user clones this github repository, they would first need to install Spin and after that would they be able to do just spin up? Or would there need to be other steps they would have to do?

Guides/guidance for these would be useful and appreciated - Thanks.

[jaydrogers]

I'd love to explore distributing apps with Spin more too. I plan to circle back to Bugflow and use Spin to distribute it.

In the eyes of the docker image, the protections we have in place are using .dockerignore files: https://shisho.dev/blog/posts/how-to-use-dockerignore/

I actually have this set up to do this automatically:

spin/lib/actions/init.sh

Lines 44 to 53 in c0693dd

	line_in_file --file "$absolute_project_directory/.dockerignore" \
	".vault-password" \
	".github" \
	".git" \
	".infrastructure" \
	"!.infrastructure/**/local-ca.pem" \
	"Dockerfile" \
	"docker-*.yml" \
	".gitlab-ci.yml" \
	".spin*"

In regards to the .gitignore, we do that for you automatically too

spin/lib/actions/init.sh

Lines 41 to 43 in c0693dd

	line_in_file --file "$absolute_project_directory/.gitignore" \
	".vault-password" \
	".spin.yml"

[akulmehta]

So currently when I commited the spin new laravel project, it also commits the .spin-inventory.ini and .spin.yml files along with the .infrastructure directory. Should I remove those?

Sorry I am just not understanding how someone can just take my repository and host their own instance separate from mine.

[jaydrogers]

Ahh, I see your goal now.

What you would want to do is build a Docker image that will be able to be distributed.

You'd leave the Spin files in there for development, etc, but then in something like GitHub Actions, you'd construct another Docker image that will be distributed to your users.

See our Financial Freedom project for example: https://github.com/serversideup/financial-freedom

We have some work to do on that yet, but it's similar to what you're trying to do

[akulmehta]

Yes (I think 😂) - this is what I want to do. So any guidance on how to take a spin new laravel to that would be great to document.