Shameless plug, I had the exact same problem with wanting to deploy some apps to a server (either home, on production at work, or IoT/Raspberry Pis), and I didn't like any of the options (Ansible is too dependent on the machine's state, Kubernetes is too complicated and heavy), so I wrote 200 lines of code and made this, which I love:
It basically pulls the repos you specify and runs `docker-compose up` on them, but does it in an opinionated way to make it easy for you to administrate the machines.
Docker compose doesn’t get the love it deserves. The most recent versions even dropped requirement to specify the schema version, it’s a beautifully compact way now to describe services and their relationships.
I have used docker-compose for my one man projects for years, removes any need for me to remember any kind of specific deployment steps for a given project. One of the biggest time savers in my entire career.
At last they are finally bringing the functionality into the core docker CLI with a native "docker compose" (not docker-compose) command - why that took until 2020 I have never understood, can only assume internal politics. If compose had been integrated sooner maybe adoption would have been wider.
I've actually come across your project before and keep meaning to try it for my PiHole/HomeAssistant/WireGuard setup etc, will check it out!
I use Dokku and like it a lot, but the automatic ingress complicated things a bit, and I couldn't easily have more elaborate setups like with Docker Compose. However, if you need a Heroku alternative, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
https://gitlab.com/stavros/harbormaster
It basically pulls the repos you specify and runs `docker-compose up` on them, but does it in an opinionated way to make it easy for you to administrate the machines.