Harbormaster

Do you have apps you want to deploy to a server, but Kubernetes is way too much? Harbormaster is for you.

Harbormaster is a small container orchestrator that lets you run multiple Docker Compose applications on a single host, with automatic deploys/restarts, simply by pushing to a git repo.

It does this by taking a list of git repository URLs that contain Docker Compose files and running the Compose apps they contain. It will also handle updating/restarting the apps when the repositories change.

Please visit the documentation for more details.

If you want an LLM to set up your Harbormaster app for you, point it at llms.txt. That file is a single-page guide with everything an agent needs to write your configuration and convert your Compose app.

Rationale

Do you have a home server you want to run a few apps on, but don't want everything to break every time you upgrade the OS? Do you want automatic updates but don't want to buy an extra 4 servers so you can run Kubernetes?

Do you have a work server that you want to run a few small services on, but don't want to have to manually manage it? Do you find that having every deployment action be in a git repo more tidy?

Harbormaster is for you.

At its core, Harbormaster takes a YAML config file with a list of git repository URLs containing Docker Compose files, clones/pulls them, and starts the services they describe.

You run Harbormaster on a timer, pointing it to a directory, and it updates all the repositories in its configuration, and restarts the Compose services if they have changed. That's it!

It also cleanly stores data for all apps in a single data/ directory, so you always have one directory that holds all the state, which you can easily back up and restore.

See more details in the documentation.