Try Project:M36 Online

This repository manages a website for learning about and trying the amazing Project:M36 database system, built by @agentm.

This setup uses the powerful Nix package management system and its accompanying toolset:

• NixOps for deployments
• NixOS as the Linux-based server OS

Note: Nix does not support Windows. If you're on Windows, you'll need to run this from within a Virtual Machine (VM).

With this setup, you can easily deploy your site to one or more servers with minimal effort. You can (and should) also deploy to local VirtualBox virtual machines. And, you can even use the Nix packages to install the site directly on your local host.

Requirements

1. First install Nix. It is not invasive and can be removed easily if you change your mind (using rm -r /nix).

2. Deployments are done with NixOps. You can install nixops with nix by running nix-env -i nixops. However, you don't need to because this repository has a deploy/manage script that you'll use which will run nixops tasks for you.

3. Install VirtualBox in order to test your server deployments.

4. If you plan to deploy to a real server, you will likely need to keep secrets in this repository. That will require installing git-crypt and setting it up. See SETUP-SECRETS.md for information on that.

Deploying to VirtualBox

Create a VirtualBox deployment:

1. deploy/manage vbox create '<server/logical.vbox.nix>' '<server/physical.vbox.nix>'
2. deploy/manage vbox deploy

Notes:

• nixops deployments can sometimes be finicky. If something hangs or fails, try running it again. It is a very deterministic system so this should not be a problem.
• Run deploy/manage --help to see all options (this is just nixops underneath).

You should then be able to open the IP of the VM in your browser and test it. If you don't know the IP, run deploy/manage vbox info.

Troubleshooting

• Sometimes VirtualBox will give your machine a new IP. If this happens, nixops (i.e. the manage script) may fail to connect to your machine via SSH. If this happens, remove the line with the old IP from your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file and try again.
• If the state of your VirtualBox VM changes in a way that nixops didn't notice, your deployments may fail. Try running ./manage vbox deploy --check (using the --check flag) to tell nixops to reassess the state of the machine.

Deploying to Real Servers

With this setup you can deploy to any PaaS/IaaS service supported by nixops. This project uses DigitalOcean. See DEPLOY-DIGITAL-OCEAN.md for details.