Single file setup

[matmair]

I think it would be helpful for people just testing InvenTree if one could just download one docker-compose, run docker compose up and have a fully running instance. This would mean we would need to remove the need for a .env and a Caddyfile. I think the .env is simple, for the Caddyfile we would probably need to run publish a custom caddy container that already contains the default file. Thoughts @SchrodingersGat @wolflu05

[wolflu05]

I like the idea of a single file setup. I remember this bothered me already the first time I setup inventree. But I'm not sure about providing a custom caddy container:

• people don't know what we changed in there
• how can we provide custom options then? Maybe if we don't want to use auto ssl?

What I saw in other projects where I'm really not a fan of, because I don't like to use normal docker volumes (they clutter the docker installation) is to put the Nginx/caddy file into the inventree image and mount it through a docker volume into the caddy container. But this only works with normal docker volumes (no bind mounts).

[matmair]

The beauty of Docker is that you can just look at the layers to see what is happening. I would just add 1 step that copies the default Caddyfile to caddy's default location. Everything in the public repo and linked via labels.

I do not like the docker volume auto-copy route either. It is very complex to understand everything once containers interact in non-standard ways.

[SchrodingersGat]

@matmair I almost implemented this in the caddy PR, but decided it was too much change at once.

I like the idea, it makes setup even simpler which is great. Pushing a custom caddy container is simple enough. How would we handle the .env though?

We would need to extend the docs to show people how to add a custom caddyfile and custom .env but that is no issue.

[matmair]

Here is the precedence for docker files so if we use the default syntax in the custom image we can still override everything/specific variables with an optional .env file. Not sure if config.yaml files will still work with this. I think most defaults should be set in the core code base and not via envs as those have precedence in InvenTree.

If we mount a Caddyfile over the default file in the custom image that should be easy enough.

[matmay]

How about you just offer a zip file with all of the 3 files in a sensible folder tree?
Or outline the folder tree in the docs?