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Thanks a ton for taking the time to write this reply. I went over it and re-read some of the docs and it makes a lot more sense to me now. The thing that made

Thanks a ton for taking the time to write this reply. I went over it and re-read some of the docs and it makes a lot more sense to me now. The thing that made it click for me is realizing how directives act differently depending on their context/scope (I'm not sure what the right term is). I really appreciate the explanation for the websocket matching. I spent a lot of time tying to find an explanation for that and couldn't find a good overview anywhere. Understanding the way the connection is upgraded helped me understand how everything is matched and sent to the backend. Now that I understand one scenario fairly well the docs are magically easier to read (imagine that! - lol). > Well, it's a balance. For the Caddyfile, we decided to focus on ergonomics rather than absolute clarity. We could make the syntax more verbose (and early betas of Caddy v2 had a much more verbose matcher syntax) but we want it to be easy to write configs once you've gotten your bearings. Yes there's a learning curve, but there's a learning curve for everything. Yes. Everything is like that. When you're learning, you're like me, complaining the config is too terse and magical. Once you know it, you're like me, complaining the config is too verbose and explicit. :-) The plugin/build thing is a bit of a mixed bag. I get the reasoning and the build system is very good/simple (building a Docker image is trivial). I replied to your other example and gave a really unpolished thought dump of why I don't want to maintain my own image. Maybe you could convince some of the infrastructure providers like Cloudflare to maintain community images with their DNS plugins baked in. Thanks again for taking the time to reply. I'm probably going to set up a custom Docker image and give things another try. If I do and I end up using Caddy, hopefully I can pay it forward at some point :-)

francislavoie 4y ago
> The thing that made it click for me is realizing how directives act differently depending on their context/scope (I'm not sure what the right term is). The Concepts page explains https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/concepts#structure https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/concepts#structure. Essentially, "directives" are top-level things inside of a site block (or things within 'route' or 'handle' as well, which wrap other directives), and things inside directives are "subdirectives", i.e. options/config for directives. Matchers are just matchers. Things inside an "empty" block at the top of the Caddyfile are "global options" (similar relative placement to directives, but can only appear in the global options block at the top). > Maybe you could convince some of the infrastructure providers like Cloudflare to maintain community images with their DNS plugins baked in. We have no contacts at Cloudflare. They'd have to reach out to us, tbh. But I don't think they are likely to see it as a benefit to them to spend the time either. Ultimately, the plugin very rarely changes, it's pretty stable at this point. > Thanks again for taking the time to reply. I'm probably going to set up a custom Docker image and give things another try. If I do and I end up using Caddy, hopefully I can pay it forward at some point :-) Glad to hear. Next time you need help, the forums are the best place to ask. It actually supports markdown, and it's actually meant for Caddy support https://caddy.community/ https://caddy.community/
- donmcronald 4y ago
  Hey. I wanted to let you know that I eventually switched my whole indie dev home lab to Caddy and it wasn't really fair for me to call the config a "black box". Once I got used to the conventions I ended up with config(s) that I'm extremely happy with and the official docs are very, very good. I hope you have a great weekend!
  - francislavoie 4y ago
    Awesome! Thanks for following up! :D

francislavoie 4y ago

> The thing that made it click for me is realizing how directives act differently depending on their context/scope (I'm not sure what the right term is). The Concepts page explains https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/concepts#structure https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile/concepts#structure. Essentially, "directives" are top-level things inside of a site block (or things within 'route' or 'handle' as well, which wrap other directives), and things inside directives are "subdirectives", i.e. options/config for directives. Matchers are just matchers. Things inside an "empty" block at the top of the Caddyfile are "global options" (similar relative placement to directives, but can only appear in the global options block at the top). > Maybe you could convince some of the infrastructure providers like Cloudflare to maintain community images with their DNS plugins baked in. We have no contacts at Cloudflare. They'd have to reach out to us, tbh. But I don't think they are likely to see it as a benefit to them to spend the time either. Ultimately, the plugin very rarely changes, it's pretty stable at this point. > Thanks again for taking the time to reply. I'm probably going to set up a custom Docker image and give things another try. If I do and I end up using Caddy, hopefully I can pay it forward at some point :-) Glad to hear. Next time you need help, the forums are the best place to ask. It actually supports markdown, and it's actually meant for Caddy support https://caddy.community/ https://caddy.community/

donmcronald 4y ago
Hey. I wanted to let you know that I eventually switched my whole indie dev home lab to Caddy and it wasn't really fair for me to call the config a "black box". Once I got used to the conventions I ended up with config(s) that I'm extremely happy with and the official docs are very, very good. I hope you have a great weekend!
- francislavoie 4y ago
  Awesome! Thanks for following up! :D