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Vercel Build Output API: Infrastructure-as-Filesystem

161 points by leerob 4y ago

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diroussel 4y ago
Could this output format be used by others, to deploy to other platforms? I currently use [1] to be able to deploy a nextjs app to AWS with API Gateway. Would be nice to have standard patterns for cloud deployments for mulitple frameworks. [1] https://github.com/serverless-nextjs/serverless-next.js/blob/master/packages/compat-layers/apigw-lambda-compat/README.md https://github.com/serverless-nextjs/serverless-next.js/blob...
- leerob 4y ago
  This could turn into a standard across deployment platforms / companies. We'd need to abstract Vercel out (e.g. different folder names) and get feedback from others, but I would be open to it. Having a standard could help drive interoperability between web deployment platforms, which I think is good for the entire ecosystem.
- gav 4y ago
  I looked at FAB[1] to support this in the past, it would be great if it supported more platforms. [1] https://fab.dev/ https://fab.dev/
- thdxr 4y ago
  we're planning on doing this at https://sst.dev https://sst.dev
simonw 4y ago
I just ran this out of curiosity to see how Vercel runs Python applications these days - here's the code it generated, which runs some heuristics to check if your app is using WSGI, ASGI or a BaseHttpRequestHandler subclass: https://gist.github.com/simonw/8521ba3385279fde4a9878f2ad8d150a https://gist.github.com/simonw/8521ba3385279fde4a9878f2ad8d1...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tedmiston 4y ago
  I tried their Python Runtime Beta semi-recently out of similar curiosity. I expected the base Python use case to support common Python function deploy setups, say Flask, FastAPI / Starlette, etc. It didn't seem like that's actually possible (if it is, the docs should mention it!)... and instead this is "Advanced Usage". I really don't consider Hello World running in Flask to be "Advanced Usage". But the alternative with the verbosity of using BaseHTTPRequestHandler with no framework is just nuts. Of course, no one is doing that on other platforms. Python is still a second-class citizen on Vercel. Heroku made this smooth... a decade ago... I really don't understand why Vercel doesn't make a serious investment in Python. It would unlock so much more potential for their platform. [Vercel, my email is in bio if you're listening ;).]
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    If you're looking for a Heroku like experience, I've heard good things about fly.io.
  - rmnclmnt 4y ago
    I have been using Vercel with Python for a few years now, it’s pretty good! Be it Flask, FastAPI or Datasette, it does the job pretty well. I admit there were some rough edges when it was still called Now but Python is now officially supported.
  - leerob 4y ago
    Sending you an email. I'd like to improve our Python on Vercel docs (lee at vercel.com if anyone else has Python feedback).
  - simonw 4y ago
    I've run Starlette apps and Flask apps on Vercel just fine. I wrote some notes here that you might find useful: https://til.simonwillison.net/zeit-now/python-asgi-on-now-v2 https://til.simonwillison.net/zeit-now/python-asgi-on-now-v2
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obblekk 4y ago
Vercel never stops impressing me. They're shipping huge new features consistently every 3-6 months. The quality of their product (we're a user) is generally very high. Seemingly every startup I know (other than those creating core web tech) are using Vercel. Definitely a company to admire imo. I wouldn't be surprised if Cloudflare or someone wanted to acquire them soon if they successfully pull off cross-language support. Heroku really fumbled the ball here, despite having a multi-year headstart.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Apparently they also built a bot (using Vercel functions) to track comments on HN re: Vercel, and yours got featured by the founder: https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1550539397241548800 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1550539397241548800
  - leerob 4y ago
    Will be open-sourcing this soon! Let me know if you're interested (lee at vercel.com).
    - klohto 4y ago
      Not that it wasn't possible before, but quick-deploy Slack bot opens the gates for spam upvoting/downvoting either from the employees or serves as an easy tool for marketers to spam replies about specific topics. I think open-sourcing it wouldn't be beneficial. More work for @dang to moderate the content and feedback to remain organic.
      - jagged-chisel 4y ago
        HN already detects voting rings and responds with lower weights for the votes from the ring.
        simooooo 4y ago
        Good luck detecting that
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yomkippur 4y ago
What does Vercel offer that AWS Lambda and its other products already provide? I see Vercel has serverless functions but how does it compare to Lambda for instance? edit: I see from reddit discussions it is initially cheaper but quickly gets even more expensive than AWS. https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/ra1whm/bye_vercel_hello_aws/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/ra1whm/bye_vercel_h...
- teg4n_ 4y ago
  Not having to deal with AWS is one major convenience. But with any of these kinds of services, you will end up paying a premium for the convenience.
  - yomkippur 4y ago
    what aspect of AWS is inconvenient here? IAM and VPC stuff just requires extra knowledge but once you understand it its not a hinderance that would get me shopping for a replacement.
    - rozenmd 4y ago
      that IAM and vpc stuff? imagine not having to know it to deploy your stuff. imagine just having a repo of your web app, and just committing via git is enough to get it online, and scalable.
      - yomkippur 4y ago
        imagine not knowing IAM/VPC imagine forgoing these knowledge because you are lazy only to pay it out of your pocket when you realize vercel's pricing is significantly larger for your employers. its not going to be fun when your startup runs out of money and you can't afford vercel anymore.
    - viraptor 4y ago
      This is kind of like the "why would I use Dropbox instead of cron+rsync" comment. There's lots things you have to do in AWS that have nothing to do with actually publishing your app. IAM, vpc, relevant vpc endpoints, secgroups/nacl, lambda, cloudwatch, cloudfront, API gateway, hopefully cloudformation/terraform, some wrapper for actually deploying the lambda, billing alerts, extra time because even though you know how to do this, it's easy to make trivial mistake that makes it not work. Or... Just use vercel or similar packaged solution.
hbcondo714 4y ago
The Browse All Templates → link on the Vercel homepage returns a 404: https://vercel.com/new/templates https://vercel.com/new/templates
- steventey 4y ago
  Hey, thanks for reporting this! Would love to know if there's a way I can reproduce this? We're currently in the process of rebuilding our Templates Marketplace so that could be why.
  - hbcondo714 4y ago
    Thanks for the quick reply! I just clicked the Browse All Templates link on https://vercel.com/ https://vercel.com/ but it's working now!
    - steventey 4y ago
      Gotcha! Thanks a lot for the headsup – I'll do some digging into it! :)
cercatrova 4y ago
How does Vercel compare with Netlify, among others? I've used both recently but wanted to hear from everyone else.
wishinghand 4y ago
I don't see a template for it, but can Vercel support a flat file CMS like Pico or Kirby? Something that writes to a text or markdown file?
deleted 4y ago
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steventey 4y ago
Never bet against Javascript!!!
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161 points by leerob 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Could this output format be used by others, to deploy to other platforms? I currently use [1] to be able to deploy a nextjs app to AWS with API Gateway. Would be nice to have standard patterns for cloud deployments for mulitple frameworks. [1] https://github.com/serverless-nextjs/serverless-next.js/blob/master/packages/compat-layers/apigw-lambda-compat/README.md https://github.com/serverless-nextjs/serverless-next.js/blob...

leerob 4y ago
This could turn into a standard across deployment platforms / companies. We'd need to abstract Vercel out (e.g. different folder names) and get feedback from others, but I would be open to it. Having a standard could help drive interoperability between web deployment platforms, which I think is good for the entire ecosystem.
gav 4y ago
I looked at FAB[1] to support this in the past, it would be great if it supported more platforms. [1] https://fab.dev/ https://fab.dev/
thdxr 4y ago
we're planning on doing this at https://sst.dev https://sst.dev

simonw 4y ago

I just ran this out of curiosity to see how Vercel runs Python applications these days - here's the code it generated, which runs some heuristics to check if your app is using WSGI, ASGI or a BaseHttpRequestHandler subclass: https://gist.github.com/simonw/8521ba3385279fde4a9878f2ad8d150a https://gist.github.com/simonw/8521ba3385279fde4a9878f2ad8d1...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tedmiston 4y ago
I tried their Python Runtime Beta semi-recently out of similar curiosity. I expected the base Python use case to support common Python function deploy setups, say Flask, FastAPI / Starlette, etc. It didn't seem like that's actually possible (if it is, the docs should mention it!)... and instead this is "Advanced Usage". I really don't consider Hello World running in Flask to be "Advanced Usage". But the alternative with the verbosity of using BaseHTTPRequestHandler with no framework is just nuts. Of course, no one is doing that on other platforms. Python is still a second-class citizen on Vercel. Heroku made this smooth... a decade ago... I really don't understand why Vercel doesn't make a serious investment in Python. It would unlock so much more potential for their platform. [Vercel, my email is in bio if you're listening ;).]
- cercatrova 4y ago
  If you're looking for a Heroku like experience, I've heard good things about fly.io.
- rmnclmnt 4y ago
  I have been using Vercel with Python for a few years now, it’s pretty good! Be it Flask, FastAPI or Datasette, it does the job pretty well. I admit there were some rough edges when it was still called Now but Python is now officially supported.
- leerob 4y ago
  Sending you an email. I'd like to improve our Python on Vercel docs (lee at vercel.com if anyone else has Python feedback).
- simonw 4y ago
  I've run Starlette apps and Flask apps on Vercel just fine. I wrote some notes here that you might find useful: https://til.simonwillison.net/zeit-now/python-asgi-on-now-v2 https://til.simonwillison.net/zeit-now/python-asgi-on-now-v2

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

obblekk 4y ago

Vercel never stops impressing me. They're shipping huge new features consistently every 3-6 months. The quality of their product (we're a user) is generally very high. Seemingly every startup I know (other than those creating core web tech) are using Vercel. Definitely a company to admire imo. I wouldn't be surprised if Cloudflare or someone wanted to acquire them soon if they successfully pull off cross-language support. Heroku really fumbled the ball here, despite having a multi-year headstart.

chrisco255 4y ago
Apparently they also built a bot (using Vercel functions) to track comments on HN re: Vercel, and yours got featured by the founder: https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1550539397241548800 https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1550539397241548800
- leerob 4y ago
  Will be open-sourcing this soon! Let me know if you're interested (lee at vercel.com).
  - klohto 4y ago
    Not that it wasn't possible before, but quick-deploy Slack bot opens the gates for spam upvoting/downvoting either from the employees or serves as an easy tool for marketers to spam replies about specific topics. I think open-sourcing it wouldn't be beneficial. More work for @dang to moderate the content and feedback to remain organic.
    - jagged-chisel 4y ago
      HN already detects voting rings and responds with lower weights for the votes from the ring.
      - simooooo 4y ago
        Good luck detecting that

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yomkippur 4y ago

What does Vercel offer that AWS Lambda and its other products already provide? I see Vercel has serverless functions but how does it compare to Lambda for instance? edit: I see from reddit discussions it is initially cheaper but quickly gets even more expensive than AWS. https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/ra1whm/bye_vercel_hello_aws/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/ra1whm/bye_vercel_h...

teg4n_ 4y ago
Not having to deal with AWS is one major convenience. But with any of these kinds of services, you will end up paying a premium for the convenience.
- yomkippur 4y ago
  what aspect of AWS is inconvenient here? IAM and VPC stuff just requires extra knowledge but once you understand it its not a hinderance that would get me shopping for a replacement.
  - rozenmd 4y ago
    that IAM and vpc stuff? imagine not having to know it to deploy your stuff. imagine just having a repo of your web app, and just committing via git is enough to get it online, and scalable.
    - yomkippur 4y ago
      imagine not knowing IAM/VPC imagine forgoing these knowledge because you are lazy only to pay it out of your pocket when you realize vercel's pricing is significantly larger for your employers. its not going to be fun when your startup runs out of money and you can't afford vercel anymore.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    This is kind of like the "why would I use Dropbox instead of cron+rsync" comment. There's lots things you have to do in AWS that have nothing to do with actually publishing your app. IAM, vpc, relevant vpc endpoints, secgroups/nacl, lambda, cloudwatch, cloudfront, API gateway, hopefully cloudformation/terraform, some wrapper for actually deploying the lambda, billing alerts, extra time because even though you know how to do this, it's easy to make trivial mistake that makes it not work. Or... Just use vercel or similar packaged solution.

hbcondo714 4y ago

The Browse All Templates → link on the Vercel homepage returns a 404: https://vercel.com/new/templates https://vercel.com/new/templates

steventey 4y ago
Hey, thanks for reporting this! Would love to know if there's a way I can reproduce this? We're currently in the process of rebuilding our Templates Marketplace so that could be why.
- hbcondo714 4y ago
  Thanks for the quick reply! I just clicked the Browse All Templates link on https://vercel.com/ https://vercel.com/ but it's working now!
  - steventey 4y ago
    Gotcha! Thanks a lot for the headsup – I'll do some digging into it! :)

cercatrova 4y ago

How does Vercel compare with Netlify, among others? I've used both recently but wanted to hear from everyone else.

wishinghand 4y ago

I don't see a template for it, but can Vercel support a flat file CMS like Pico or Kirby? Something that writes to a text or markdown file?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

steventey 4y ago

Never bet against Javascript!!!

deleted 4y ago

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deleted 4y ago

[deleted]