README
¶
An effortless, self-hosted continuous deployment platform.
Usage · Motivation & Design · Contributing · Wiki
Inertia is a simple cross-platform command line application that enables quick and easy setup and management of continuous, automated deployment of a variety of project types on any virtual private server. The project is used, built, and maintained with ❤ by UBC Launch Pad, UBC's student-run software engineering club.
| Main Features | |
|---|---|
| 🚀 | Simple to use - set up a deployment from your computer without ever having to manually SSH into your remote |
| 🍰 | Cloud-agnostic - use any Linux-based remote virtual private server provider you want |
| ⚒ | Versatile project support - deploy any Dockerfile or docker-compose project |
| 🚄 | Continuous deployment - Webhook integrations for GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket means your project can be automatically updated, rebuilt, and deployed as soon as you git push |
| 🛂 | In-depth controls - start up, shut down, and monitor your deployment with ease from the command line or using Inertia's REST API |
| 🏷 | Flexible configuration - branch deployment, environment variables, easy file transfer for configuration files, build settings, and more |
| 📦 | Built-in provisioning - easily provision and set up VPS instances for your project with supported providers such as Amazon Web Services using a single command |
| 👥 | Built for teams - provide shared access to an Inertia deployment by adding users |
| 🔑 | Secure - secured with access tokens and HTTPS across the board, as well as features like 2FA for user logins |
📦 Usage
Check out our new Inertia Usage Guide to get started with using Inertia for your project! The guide will walk you through installing Inertia, setting up a project, deploying to a remote, managing your deployment, and advanced usage tips.
Why Use Inertia?
If you...
- want a simple utility to quickly build and deploy the latest iterations of your projects
- are new to the concept of "deployment" and related tooling
- are not deploying to production
- are on a tight budget and need to switch between cloud providers as your free trials run out
- want some lightweight team features for managing your deployment
Inertia might be for you!
💡 Motivation and Design
UBC Launch Pad is a student-run software engineering club at the University of British Columbia that aims to provide students with a community where they can work together to build a all sorts of cool projects, ranging from mobile apps and web services to cryptocurrencies and machine learning applications.
Many of our projects rely on hosting providers for deployment. Unfortunately we frequently change hosting providers based on available funding and sponsorship, meaning our projects often need to be redeployed. On top of that, deployment itself can already be a frustrating task, especially for students with little to no experience setting up applications on remote hosts. Inertia is a project we started to address these problems, with the goal of developing an in-house deployment system that can make setting up continuously deployed applications simple and painless, regardless of the hosting provider.
The primary design goals of Inertia are to:
- minimize setup time for new projects
- maximimise compatibility across different client and VPS platforms
- offer an easy-to-learn interface for managing deployed applications
How It Works
There is a detailed Medium post that goes over the project, its motivations, the design choices we made, and Inertia's implementation. The team has also made a few presentations about Inertia that go over its design in some more detail:
In summary, Inertia consists of two major components: a deployment daemon and a command line interface.
The deployment daemon runs persistently in the background on the server, receiving webhook events from GitHub whenever new commits are pushed. The CLI provides an interface to adjust settings and manage the deployment - this is done through HTTPS requests to the daemon, authenticated using JSON web tokens generated by the daemon. Remote configuration is stored locally in .inertia.toml.
Inertia is set up serverside by executing a script over SSH that installs Docker and starts an Inertia daemon image with access to the host Docker socket. This Docker-in-Docker configuration gives the daemon the ability to start up other containers alongside it, rather than within it, as required. Once the daemon is set up, we avoid using further SSH commands and execute Docker commands through Docker's Golang API. Instead of installing the docker-compose toolset, we use a docker-compose image to build and deploy user projects.
📚 Contributing
Any contribution (pull requests, feedback, bug reports, ideas, etc.) is welcome!
Please see our contribution guide for contribution guidelines as well as a detailed guide to help you get started with Inertia's codebase.
Documentation
¶
Overview ¶
Inertia is the command line interface that helps you set up your remote for continuous deployment and allows you to manage your deployment through configuration options and various commands.
It can be installed in several ways:
# Mac users brew install ubclaunchpad/tap/inertia # Windows users scoop bucket add ubclaunchpad https://github.com/ubclaunchpad/scoop-bucket scoop install inertia
Users of other platforms can install the Inertia CLI from the Releases page, found here: https://github.com/ubclaunchpad/inertia/releases/latest
To help with usage, most relevant documentation can be seen by using the --help flag on any command:
inertia --help inertia init --help inertia [remote] up --help
Documentation can also be triggered by simply entering a command without the prerequisite arguments or additional commands:
inertia remote # documentation about remote configuration
Inertia has two "core" sets of commands - one that primarily handles local configuration, and one that allows you to control your remote VPS instances and their associated deployments.
For local configuration, most commands will build off of the root "inertia ..." command. For example, a typical set of commands to set up a project might look like:
inertia init # initiates Inertia configuration inertia remote add my_cloud # adds configuration for a remote VPS instance
The other set of commands are based on a remote VPS configuration, and the available commands can be seen by running:
inertia [remote] --help
In the previous example, the next steps to set up a deployment might be:
inertia my_cloud init # bootstraps remote and installs Inertia daemon inertia my_cloud up # deploys your project
Some of these commands offer a --stream flag that allows you to view realtime log feedback from the daemon.
More documentation on Inertia, how it works, and how to use it can be found in the project repository: https://github.com/ubclaunchpad/inertia/tree/master
Source Files
Directories
¶
| Path | Synopsis |
|---|---|
|
Package api contains definitions for Inertia API requests and responses
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Package api contains definitions for Inertia API requests and responses |
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Package cfg provides configuration structs and types
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Package cfg provides configuration structs and types |
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Package client provides the interface through which Inertia communicates with a serverside daemon
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Package client provides the interface through which Inertia communicates with a serverside daemon |
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internal
Package internal provides compiled scripts and other internal assets
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Package internal provides compiled scripts and other internal assets |
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Package inertiacmd provides a parent class for the root 'inertia' command
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Package inertiacmd provides a parent class for the root 'inertia' command |
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config
Package configcmd implements the 'inertia config' subcommands
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Package configcmd implements the 'inertia config' subcommands |
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host
Package hostcmd implements the 'inertia [host]' subcommands
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Package hostcmd implements the 'inertia [host]' subcommands |
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inpututil
Package inpututil provides input parsing utilities for the Inertia CLI
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Package inpututil provides input parsing utilities for the Inertia CLI |
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printutil
Package printutil provides output utilities for the Inertia CLI
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Package printutil provides output utilities for the Inertia CLI |
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provision
Package provisioncmd implements the 'inertia provision' subcommands
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Package provisioncmd implements the 'inertia provision' subcommands |
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remote
Package remotecmd implements the 'inertia remote' subcommands
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Package remotecmd implements the 'inertia remote' subcommands |
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Package common provides utilities, shared variables, and types for both the client and the daemon
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Package common provides utilities, shared variables, and types for both the client and the daemon |
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daemon
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inertiad
Inertiad is Inertia's daemon component.
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Inertiad is Inertia's daemon component. |
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inertiad/auth
Package auth provides the Inertia daemon's authentication and security framework
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Package auth provides the Inertia daemon's authentication and security framework |
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inertiad/build
Package build implements Inertia's build procedures
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Package build implements Inertia's build procedures |
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inertiad/build/mocks
Code generated by counterfeiter.
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Code generated by counterfeiter. |
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inertiad/cfg
Package cfg provides the daemon's core configuration
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Package cfg provides the daemon's core configuration |
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inertiad/containers
Package containers provides utilities for interacting with Docker containers
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Package containers provides utilities for interacting with Docker containers |
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inertiad/crypto
Package crypto provides functions for managing encryption, keys, etc.
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Package crypto provides functions for managing encryption, keys, etc. |
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inertiad/daemon
Package daemon provides Inertiad's core server and API
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Package daemon provides Inertiad's core server and API |
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inertiad/git
Package git provides functions for interacting with git repositories
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Package git provides functions for interacting with git repositories |
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inertiad/log
Package log provides logging utilities
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Package log provides logging utilities |
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inertiad/project
Package project contains Inertia's build and project management code
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Package project contains Inertia's build and project management code |
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inertiad/project/mocks
Code generated by counterfeiter.
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Code generated by counterfeiter. |
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inertiad/util
Package util provides miscellaneous utility functions
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Package util provides miscellaneous utility functions |
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inertiad/webhook
Package webhook contains Inertia's webhook parsing code
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Package webhook contains Inertia's webhook parsing code |
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Package local provides access to local assets for the CLI
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Package local provides access to local assets for the CLI |
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Package provision contains Inertia's VPS instance provisioning API
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Package provision contains Inertia's VPS instance provisioning API |