Bullet

Bullet is a fast and flexible application deployment tool built by Furqan Software. It automates the full lifecycle of deploying containerized applications to remote servers over SSH, without the overhead of a full orchestration platform.

Features

• Server setup: Installs Docker and prepares remote servers for deployments.
• Tarball-based deploys: Packages application code into tarballs, uploads them over SCP, and builds Docker images on the server.
• Program management: Define multiple programs (e.g. web, worker) per application, each running in its own container.
• Scaling: Scale programs up or down with expression-based rules that can factor in host tags and hardware.
• Cron jobs: Manage scheduled tasks backed by systemd timers, with optional healthcheck pings.
• Zero-downtime reloads: Reload containers via signal, command, or restart, with support for pre-reload hooks.
• Environment management: Push environment files to servers.
• Log tailing: Tail container logs directly from the CLI.
• Port forwarding: Forward remote ports to your local machine over SSH.
• Host access: Open an interactive shell, view disk usage, or run top on remote servers.
• Multi-node support: Target multiple hosts per deployment with interactive node selection.
• Release pruning: Clean up old releases to free disk space.

Getting Started

Install

From source:

go install github.com/FurqanSoftware/bullet@latest

Or download a prebuilt binary from the Releases page.

Define a Bulletspec

Create a Bulletspec file in your project root. This defines your application and its programs:

application:
  name: Hello World
  identifier: hello

  programs:
    web:
      name: Hello World Web Server
      command: node index.js
      container:
        image: node:8.1-alpine
      ports:
        - 80:5000

Configure Hosts

Pass hosts directly via flags:

bullet -H 192.168.0.3 <command>

Or create a Bulletcfg.<name> file:

hosts: 192.168.0.3,192.168.0.4
port: 22

Then use it with:

bullet -c <name> <command>

You can also set hosts via environment variables:

export BULLET_HOSTS=192.168.0.3

Set Up a Server

bullet -H 192.168.0.3 setup

This installs Docker and prepares the server for deployments.

Deploy

Package your application as a tarball and deploy:

tar czf app.tar.gz <your files>
bullet -H 192.168.0.3 deploy app.tar.gz

Scale Programs

bullet -H 192.168.0.3 scale web=2

Other Commands

bullet status              # Show container status
bullet restart             # Restart containers
bullet run <program>       # Run a one-off container
bullet log <program>       # Tail container logs
bullet cron:enable <job>   # Enable a cron job
bullet cron:disable <job>  # Disable a cron job
bullet cron:status         # Show cron job status
bullet environ:push <file> # Push environment file to server
bullet forward <port>      # Forward a remote port locally
bullet prune               # Remove old releases
bullet host:shell          # SSH into a server
bullet host:df             # Show disk usage
bullet host:top            # Show running processes

But, Kubernetes?

https://k8s.af/

Acknowledgements

• Nikita Golubev - For the bullet icon