Dokku is an open source platform as a service (PaaS) powered by Docker that is touted as an open-source and mini version of Heroku. Its GitHub page calls it “the smallest PaaS implementation you’ve ever seen.”
It builds applications using either Dockerfile or Buildpacks that automatically detect the codebase’s language, and then runs the applications in isolated containers. Once Dokku is set up, Heroku-compatible apps can be pushed to it using git commands.
“Our personal goal is to make the deployment part easy, so all you have to do is worry about writing code,” the project maintainers wrote in a blog post.
In addition to being based on Docker, it also utilizes technologies like nginx and cron to route web processes and automate tasks.
Dokku is built out of plugins, such as “config” for managing environment variables and “checks for checking that an application starts as it should. Users can also create their own plugins and share them online. “Dokku’s simple core is easy to hack and add the features you need to get your job done,” the website states.
It was created in 2013, and as of September 2024, the project had over 28K stars on GitHub, more than 511 contributors, and its latest release is v0.34.9.
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