Deployment

cartapel is a single self-contained binary — the SPA is embedded, there is no Node runtime, and its only external dependency is your Postgres. Pick your path:

• Trying it out? → Render one-click (free tier, zero setup).
• Production with durable state? → Fly.io or Docker with volumes.
• Bare metal? → Build from source — releases ship the Docker image only, no prebuilt binaries.

The pieces

A running cartapel needs:

1. The binary (or Docker image).
2. A Postgres URL — via --db, CARTAPEL_DB, or the primary source's url in config/cartapel.hcl.
3. A secret key — via CARTAPEL_SECRET_KEY or [cartapel].secret_key. Required.
4. A config directory — optional, but without it no tables are exposed.
5. A data directory — cartapel's own SQLite state (users, sessions, audit, config history). Defaults to ./cartapel-data; put it on durable storage.

One-click deploy

Render (free tier): deploy from this repo — the blueprint (render.yaml) runs the published image, prompts for your postgres:// URL and admin credentials, generates the secret key and seeds a minimal config so you land in the /_setup wizard over your own database. The free filesystem is ephemeral (config edits survive restarts, not redeploys) — attach a disk at /data for durability.

Fly.io in two commands, with a durable volume:

fly launch --image ghcr.io/de-rus/cartapel:latest --no-deploy
fly volumes create cartapel_data --size 1
# add [mounts] source="cartapel_data" destination="/data" to fly.toml, then:
fly secrets set CARTAPEL_DB=postgres://… CARTAPEL_SECRET_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \
  [email protected] CARTAPEL_ADMIN_PASSWORD=change-me
fly deploy

Docker

docker run -d --name cartapel -p 8686:8686 \
  -e CARTAPEL_DB="postgres://user:pass@db:5432/app" \
  -e CARTAPEL_SECRET_KEY="a-long-random-secret" \
  -e CARTAPEL_ADMIN_EMAIL="[email protected]" \
  -e CARTAPEL_ADMIN_PASSWORD="change-me" \
  -v "$PWD/admin:/config:ro" \
  -v "cartapel-data:/data" \
  ghcr.io/de-rus/cartapel:latest \
  serve --config /config --schema public

• Mount your config bundle at /config. Read-only (:ro) bakes it in; a writable mount enables live editing (see below).
• Mount a named volume at /data so users, sessions and audit survive restarts.
• The image already binds 0.0.0.0:8686 and stores state at /data (CARTAPEL_LISTEN / CARTAPEL_DATA in the Dockerfile), so the published port is reachable without extra flags.

Deploy to Fly.io + Supabase

The repo ships a fly.toml that runs the published image (pinned to a release tag — bump it to adopt a new version) with the bundled Acme demo config. To run it — swap in your own config and database as you go.

1. Database — Supabase. Create a free project and copy its Transaction pooler connection string (host ends in …pooler.supabase.com, port 6543). cartapel auto-detects that pooler and disables the prepared-statement cache for it (see below).

2. App — Fly. Pick an app name in fly.toml (app = "…"), then:

   fly apps create your-cartapel
   fly secrets set \
     CARTAPEL_DB="postgresql://postgres.__ref__:PASSWORD@aws-0-…pooler.supabase.com:6543/postgres" \
     CARTAPEL_SECRET_KEY="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
     CARTAPEL_ADMIN_EMAIL="[email protected]" \
     CARTAPEL_ADMIN_PASSWORD="a-strong-password"
   fly deploy

Secrets are set with fly secrets set and never committed to fly.toml. The [env] block there carries only non-secrets (CARTAPEL_CONFIG, CARTAPEL_BASE_PATH, CARTAPEL_LISTEN, CARTAPEL_SECURE_COOKIES). To serve your own admin instead of the demo, point CARTAPEL_CONFIG at your bundle (bake it into the image or mount a volume) rather than /demo/admin.

cartapel's SQLite state lives on the machine's ephemeral disk here; the admin user re-bootstraps from CARTAPEL_ADMIN_* on each fresh machine. Mount a Fly volume at /data (the image's default CARTAPEL_DATA) if you want sessions and the audit log to survive redeploys.

Bare binary (from source)

Releases publish the Docker image only — for bare metal, build the binary yourself. The SPA must be built first because it is embedded at compile time:

git clone https://github.com/De-Rus/cartapel && cd cartapel
cd ui && pnpm install && pnpm build && cd ..   # SPA, embedded into the binary
cargo build --release                          # → target/release/cartapel

Then run it (systemd, supervisor, whatever you use):

CARTAPEL_DB="postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/app" \
CARTAPEL_SECRET_KEY="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
./target/release/cartapel serve --config ./admin --data /var/lib/cartapel

The default bind is 127.0.0.1:8686 — pass --listen 0.0.0.0:8686 (or put a reverse proxy in front) to expose it.

Environment-first configuration

Every serve flag has an environment variable, so a container needs no CLI args beyond the subcommand. The full set, matching cartapel serve:

Variable	Default	Purpose
CARTAPEL_DB	—	Postgres URL. Falls back to the primary source's url in config/cartapel.hcl.
CARTAPEL_SCHEMA	primary source's schemas, else public	Postgres schema to introspect.
CARTAPEL_CONFIG	—	Config directory. Optional — without it, no tables are exposed.
CARTAPEL_DATA	./cartapel-data	State directory (SQLite: users, sessions, audit, config history).
CARTAPEL_BASE_PATH	/admin	URL prefix the panel is served under. Set '' (or /) for the domain root, or any prefix like /panel.
CARTAPEL_LISTEN	127.0.0.1:8686	Bind address (0.0.0.0:8686 in the Docker image).
CARTAPEL_SECURE_COOKIES	true	Secure attribute on session cookies. Keep on behind HTTPS; set false for local plain HTTP.
CARTAPEL_SECRET_KEY	—	Cookie-signing secret. Required (here or as [cartapel].secret_key in config).
CARTAPEL_WEBHOOK_SECRET	—	Signs outbound webhook actions.
CARTAPEL_DB_TX_POOL	auto-detect	Set 1 to force transaction-pooler mode (see below).

First-run bootstrap reads CARTAPEL_ADMIN_EMAIL (default admin@localhost) / CARTAPEL_ADMIN_PASSWORD (generated and logged when unset) / CARTAPEL_ADMIN_ROLE — the role defaults to admin, and a public demo can bootstrap a restricted role instead. See the CLI reference for the per-subcommand tables.

Config values themselves can read the environment with env:NAME / ${NAME}, so you can keep the DB URL and secret in config/cartapel.hcl while still sourcing them from the environment.

Writable config volume

cartapel can edit its own config through the in-app visual builder, but only when the config directory is writable. It probes this at startup:

• Read-only bundle (baked into the image, :ro mount): the builder is read-only. Config PUTs don't write; the UI tells the user to commit the file to the repo instead. This is the GitOps-style deployment.
• Writable volume: the builder writes changes back to disk (atomically) and every change is versioned in the SQLite state (history + rollback). Edits persist across restarts because the files live on the mounted volume.

A common pattern is a writable config volume with a seed-if-empty entrypoint: copy a baked-in default bundle into the volume on first boot, then let admins evolve it live. That is exactly what the Render blueprint's dockerCommand does — it seeds a one-source cartapel.hcl into /data/admin if none exists.

Base path and mounting

The panel is served under /admin by default. The mount prefix is injected into the SPA at runtime (the server rewrites index.html at serve time), so a single build/image serves under any path — you never rebuild to change it:

# same published image, three different mount points
docker run … ghcr.io/de-rus/cartapel serve                     # → /admin (default)
docker run … -e CARTAPEL_BASE_PATH="" ghcr.io/de-rus/cartapel serve       # → /  (root)
docker run … -e CARTAPEL_BASE_PATH=/panel ghcr.io/de-rus/cartapel serve   # → /panel

That's what lets you pull ghcr.io/de-rus/cartapel and mount it wherever your setup wants — no fork, no custom build. GET / redirects to the mount path.

Behind a reverse proxy

To serve cartapel under a sub-path (e.g. https://app.example.com/panel), set CARTAPEL_BASE_PATH=/panel and proxy that prefix. cartapel serves everything beneath it — the SPA, the API under {base}/api, static assets under {base}/static, and the hashed SPA bundle under {base}/assets — so one location block covers it all. An nginx location proxying to cartapel on :8686:

location /panel/ {
    proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:8686;
    proxy_set_header   Host              $host;
    proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For   $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}

Keep --secure-cookies on (the default) when the proxy terminates HTTPS.

Health checks

{base}/api/health returns {"ok": true} unauthenticated — point your load balancer or orchestrator's liveness probe at it (the Render blueprint uses /admin/api/health).

Connection pooling note

cartapel keeps a small Postgres pool (5 connections). If you sit it behind a transaction-mode pooler (like Supabase's pgbouncer on port 6543), cartapel auto-detects it and disables the prepared-statement cache (which such poolers drop between transactions). Force this with CARTAPEL_DB_TX_POOL=1 if you use a non-standard port. The session-mode pooler (port 5432) needs no special handling — on direct/session connections cartapel also sets a per-connection statement timeout.

Validate before you ship

cartapel check --config ./admin --db … exits non-zero on any parse error or schema drift — run it in CI next to your migrations. See the CLI reference.