Feature request: Simple git server

[bugs181]

Praise:
Hey there! Just ran across fenix and have to say that this is pretty awesome so far. Been looking for something like this for quite a while to automate my nodejs http server processes. Currently running anywhere between 20 to 30 projects for my various team's project workflow.

Request:
I know that fenix is primarily open source and that our team could add this feature ourselves, but I'd much prefer the authors of fenix to add it that way others can benefit from it too (if approved, that is). It already seems you have a lot of features geared primarily towards development, like the current list of resources for example. This feature would be sort of an extension of that.

Right now there is another open source project called deploy which is a minimal git server. Adding another optional toggle switch to enable a local git server, with the added benefit of being forward proxied by SSH tunneling too, would be wicked awesome.

That project can be found here: https://github.com/dominictarr/deploy

I think this would speed up development times during collaboration and offer an extreme advantage for fast prototyping between teammates, that web technologies are moving toward. The additional benefit would be to have the ability to remotely work on your websites from another machine, the only prerequisite being a git client.

[coreybutler]

First, thank you for your feedback!! I'm glad to hear Fenix has been helpful so far. It was designed for managing a bunch of sites, so I'm glad to know I'm not the only one running a bunch of them :-)

Git deployment is something I've been thinking about on a lot of levels. It's a bit more complex overall than what Dominic's module handles, but it is possible. There are a bunch of other similar kinds of push-button feature ideas that have popped up as well. I've made no decisions yet, but I've been experimenting with ways to offer a plugin system... obviously the goal in that would be creating a means for devs to create small add-ons without having to learn everything in the code base.

I'm also experimenting with some much more involved collaboration features (which might have to be commercial). So, while I can't guarantee anything right now, I will say your use case completely resonates with me and I'm working on a number of things in and around this area.

[bugs181]

Your response was music to my ears. I fully back your idea to have a plugin type architecture as most of our projects have something similar. It makes it very easy for new team members or other developers to come on board and create something fantastic without having to learn the whole code base.

I'm interested in hearing more about some of the collaboration features you plan to make commercial. I contribute to fenix by being a commercial supporter if the tools are found to be useful.

The only request I could make about that would be to please have a team license available. This is one of the primary reasons our team doesn't support most commercial software is because it would be much too expensive to purchase individual licenses. We usually end up hacking something together ourselves in those instances. Whereas if we could purchase a team license for 3 to 5 devs at time, it would be much more affordable and we could swing it.

I look forward to seeing fenix grow.

[coreybutler]

The number one area of interest in a potential commercial offering is a hosted collaboration/SSH server. The localtunnel server Fenix currently uses is a free one hosted by a gracious volunteer. As expected with free, there have been some issues with availability and inherent limitations (like not being able to configure basic auth). This opens the doors for a lot of great features, including substantial feedback tooling and deployment options. The goal is to keep the desktop software free... so the value-add of the service is for collaborative teams. To your point, licensing would be based on server resources, not the number of developers.

I am planning to put up a feedback form later this month or in early January for more comments and feature requests around this subject. I'll send this out to the newsletter (signup is on the bottom of fenixwebserver.com), so I encourage you to sign up if you haven't already.

Again, thank you very much for your feedback. The more insight the community provides, the better this software can be.