djevops 0.2.0

Host Django without Docker

djevops: Self-host Django easily

djevops is a command-line tool for deploying Django web apps to Linux VPSs. Unlike other tools, djevops runs Django without Docker. This makes development faster and easier.

To get started with djevops, all you need is SSH root access to a Linux VPS running Ubuntu or Debian. Install djevops on your local machine with pip install djevops. Then, execute djevops init in your Django app's Git repository. You get a config file that looks similar to the following:

server: 1.2.3.4

git:
  repo: githubuser/reponame
  branch: main

services:
  web:
    type: django
    env:
      clear:
        ALLOWED_HOSTS: your.website.com
      secret:
        - DJANGO_SECRET_KEY

db:
  type: sqlite

mail:
  host: smtp.gmail.com
  user: SMTP_USER
  password: SMTP_PASSWORD

Secrets such as DJANGO_SECRET_KEY or SMTP_PASSWORD can be specified as constants in file deploy/secrets.py.

Most config values are optional. Fill in the ones you want and run djevops deploy. djevops then clones your Git repo on the server and starts all services. As you work on your Django app and push new commits to Git, simply run djevops deploy again to apply them to your server.

Features

Automatic SSL certificates

djevops generates and automatically renews SSL certificates for any domains you specify in Django setting ALLOWED_HOSTS. The domains need to be tied to your server's IP address.

Error emails

If you filled in the mail section in the config file, then you can make Django email you when errors occur. To do so, set ADMINS in Django's settings.py as follows:

ADMINS = [('Your Name', '[e-mail])]

Error emails require Django setting DEBUG to be False.

Automatic database backups

You can set up automatic database backups by adding a backup element to the db section in the djevops config file. For example:

db:
  type: sqlite
  backup:
    type: s3
    bucket: mybackup
    access-key-id: S3_BACKUP_ACCESS_KEY
    secret-access-key: S3_BACKUP_SECRET_KEY
    path: db
    region: us-east-1

Backups are created continuously while your server is running. If you ever re-install your server, then the latest backup is automatically restored.

For database type sqlite, djevops uses Litestream for backups. Litestream can store backups in S3, Azure Blob Storage and many others. The keys you add to the backup element above get copied into a replica element in Litestream's config. For more information about the available options, please see Litestream's documentation.

Djevops also supports database type postgres. For more information about this, please see below.

PostgreSQL

Instead of SQLite, you can use PostgreSQL by setting the database type to postgres:

db:
  type: postgres

You then configure the connection yourself in your settings.py:

import os

DATABASES['default'] = {
    'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
    'NAME': 'myapp',
    'USER': 'myapp',
    'PASSWORD': os.environ['DB_PASSWORD'],
    'HOST': 'localhost',
    'PORT': 5432,
}

djevops reads these settings and installs PostgreSQL on the server, creating the database and user (with the password) you specified. Keep the password out of Git by storing it in deploy/secrets.py. For example:

DB_PASSWORD = "<some strong password>"

Then reference it as a secret in the Django service's environment:

services:
  web:
    type: django
    env:
      secret:
        - DB_PASSWORD

You also need to add the psycopg driver to your pyproject.toml:

dependencies = [
    ...
    "psycopg[binary]",
]

As with SQLite, you can add a backup element to enable automatic backups. By default, PostgreSQL backups are taken once per day. You can customize this by setting sync-interval in the backup element, for example to 1h for hourly backups.

Background tasks via Celery and Redis

If your Django app uses the celery Python package, then you can add a Celery worker by adding the following item to the djevops config:

services:
  web:
    # as before
  celery:
    type: celery
    env:
      inherit: web

To install Redis on the server (which many Django apps use as Celery's backend), add an empty redis block:

redis:

This setup lets you run Python functions asynchronously and on a schedule such as "every five hours". The service of type celery also runs the necessary beat scheduler.

Easy access to log files

djevops writes the log file for each service to /var/log/<service>.log. To read it, simply SSH into the server and do less, tail -f, etc. To prevent log files from filling up your server's disk space, djevops also rotates and compresses log files.

Secret handling

Very often, you have secrets that you need on the server but should not commit to Git. djevops lets you specify such values in the file deploy/secrets.py, and refer to them from your config file. The way this works is that secrets.py gets executed on your local machine, and the produced values then get uploaded as constants to the server. This gives you a lot of flexibility. You can hardcode values in secrets.py and not commit that file to Git. Or you can for example make secrets.py read from environment variables that are available when you do djevops deploy:

import os
MY_SECRET = os.environ['MY_SECRET']

You can also invoke password managers in secrets.py, etc.

Secure defaults

djevops uses secure defaults whenever possible. For example, each service runs as a separate user. This means that environment variables cannot leak from one service to another. djevops also makes sure that no unintended ports are open, such as for example port 25 when using Postfix for sending emails.

Automatic OS updates

djevops sets up automatic OS updates to keep your server up-to-date and secure. This does not apply major version upgrades, which could introduce potentially breaking changes.

Easy access to `manage.py shell` on the server

Just type djevops shell to be dropped into a remote Django shell on your server. This uses the environment variables and user of the first service of type django in deploy/djevops.yml.

Development

Install the test dependencies from pyproject.toml. The easiest way I know for doing this is with uv:

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv sync --no-install-project --extra test

Then, you can do python -m unittest to run tests. This requires several API keys specified in environment variables.