4 ms·

I'm all for SQLite and I am a fan of the author of the project but for a webserver I have turned my back away from Nginx for https://caddyserver.com/ https://ca

I'm all for SQLite and I am a fan of the author of the project but for a webserver I have turned my back away from Nginx for https://caddyserver.com/ https://caddyserver.com/ because of the simplicity. Caddy is just really awesome as a reverse proxy (2 line config!!) and I am in the processes of moving all my projects to it. It is fast enough as well since other things will be the bottle neck way before that. I am not affiliated with Caddy in any way, just blown away by the quality of it.

eatonphil 5y ago
A big missing feature in Caddy for me is an embedded language like Lua for nginx so you can write tiny hooks. The Caddy authors have indicated on HN a while ago that Caddy 2 may have an embedded scripting language but I can't find anything about it in their docs.
- coder543 5y ago
  Seems like it was postponed[0]. For very tiny hooks, you might be able to get away with using request matchers[1] and respond[2]. [0]: https://caddy.community/t/missing-starlark-documentation/9580/5 https://caddy.community/t/missing-starlark-documentation/958... [1]: https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/matchers https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/matchers [2]: https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/respond https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/respond
- francislavoie 5y ago
  Writing plugins for Caddy is so easy that it's generally not necessary to have scripting built-in. You can just build yourself a new binary with a Go plugin just by using the "xcaddy" build tool. https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy But yeah, it's still something at the back of our minds, and we were considering Starlark for this, but that hasn't really materialized because it's usually easier to just go with the plugin route.
terminalserver 5y ago
The thing I love most about caddy is it automatically does all the ssl certificate garbage which is so painful in every other web server ever. Yes certbot makes it less painful but it’s still a big PITA, unlike caddy where SSL is just like magic.
- xupybd 5y ago
  And zero dependencies! This might solve my problem with older servers that no longer support the latest SSL. I really need to upgrade those rickety old machines.
  - squiggleblaz 5y ago
    I suppose you mean zero runtime dependencies? It seems to have few dozen build dependencies. Runtime dependencies create a nuisance as you have to update several things together. On the other hand, they can allow components with separate update cycles and responsibilities to be update separately. Build dependencies create maintainability and security problems. They can also solve maintainability and security problems. It depends on what your consideration is. But as a matter of practice, many developers seem too concerned with possible behavioral/API breakage, that they like to pin to specific versions of their dependencies, which now means that you aren't getting any security fixes. (Technically, Althttpd doesn't achieve zero runtime dependencies in comparison to a modern http server that does HTTPS, because it requires a separate program to terminate TLS. But these connect through general mechanisms that are much easier to combine and update separately.) Everyone has to make a judgement about how they maintain their own systems, but being excited about "zero (runtime) dependencies!" isn't the way the judgement concludes.
  - petre 5y ago
    You mean zero runtime deps because it pulls a lot of stuff when it does get built. Still great but I'd use traefik for more than 10 sites.
    - francislavoie 5y ago
      Caddy can serve thousands of sites without a sweat. What are your concerns exactly?
Winsaucerer 5y ago
I fiddled around for many hours with traefik, and could not get it to do what I wanted -- something I'd done before and had a known example working config of. 10 minutes of caddy, I had everything running exactly as I wanted and the job was done.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I tried Traefik for the first time around 6 months ago (version 2) - man, coming from nginx (which I wouldn't call simple), I found Traefik config to be really confusing. It felt like I had to specify the same stuff 2 or 3 times, and in general it was just so unintuitive. And the docs (at the time at least) only showed snippets of trivial examples. I don't think I'd choose to use it again. Instead, I'll try Caddy, or HAProxy if I need massive performance.

eatonphil 5y ago

A big missing feature in Caddy for me is an embedded language like Lua for nginx so you can write tiny hooks. The Caddy authors have indicated on HN a while ago that Caddy 2 may have an embedded scripting language but I can't find anything about it in their docs.

coder543 5y ago
Seems like it was postponed[0]. For very tiny hooks, you might be able to get away with using request matchers[1] and respond[2]. [0]: https://caddy.community/t/missing-starlark-documentation/9580/5 https://caddy.community/t/missing-starlark-documentation/958... [1]: https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/matchers https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/matchers [2]: https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/respond https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/directives/respond
francislavoie 5y ago
Writing plugins for Caddy is so easy that it's generally not necessary to have scripting built-in. You can just build yourself a new binary with a Go plugin just by using the "xcaddy" build tool. https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy But yeah, it's still something at the back of our minds, and we were considering Starlark for this, but that hasn't really materialized because it's usually easier to just go with the plugin route.

terminalserver 5y ago

The thing I love most about caddy is it automatically does all the ssl certificate garbage which is so painful in every other web server ever. Yes certbot makes it less painful but it’s still a big PITA, unlike caddy where SSL is just like magic.

xupybd 5y ago
And zero dependencies! This might solve my problem with older servers that no longer support the latest SSL. I really need to upgrade those rickety old machines.
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  I suppose you mean zero runtime dependencies? It seems to have few dozen build dependencies. Runtime dependencies create a nuisance as you have to update several things together. On the other hand, they can allow components with separate update cycles and responsibilities to be update separately. Build dependencies create maintainability and security problems. They can also solve maintainability and security problems. It depends on what your consideration is. But as a matter of practice, many developers seem too concerned with possible behavioral/API breakage, that they like to pin to specific versions of their dependencies, which now means that you aren't getting any security fixes. (Technically, Althttpd doesn't achieve zero runtime dependencies in comparison to a modern http server that does HTTPS, because it requires a separate program to terminate TLS. But these connect through general mechanisms that are much easier to combine and update separately.) Everyone has to make a judgement about how they maintain their own systems, but being excited about "zero (runtime) dependencies!" isn't the way the judgement concludes.
- petre 5y ago
  You mean zero runtime deps because it pulls a lot of stuff when it does get built. Still great but I'd use traefik for more than 10 sites.
  - francislavoie 5y ago
    Caddy can serve thousands of sites without a sweat. What are your concerns exactly?

Winsaucerer 5y ago

I fiddled around for many hours with traefik, and could not get it to do what I wanted -- something I'd done before and had a known example working config of. 10 minutes of caddy, I had everything running exactly as I wanted and the job was done.

GordonS 5y ago
I tried Traefik for the first time around 6 months ago (version 2) - man, coming from nginx (which I wouldn't call simple), I found Traefik config to be really confusing. It felt like I had to specify the same stuff 2 or 3 times, and in general it was just so unintuitive. And the docs (at the time at least) only showed snippets of trivial examples. I don't think I'd choose to use it again. Instead, I'll try Caddy, or HAProxy if I need massive performance.