Easier self-hosting of a private Docker registry

[hundredwatt]

I assume long term there will be a solution to run the Docker registry on your own server natively via kamal.

Until then, I worked out a short-term solution using an accessory and kamal-proxy trickery: https://nochlin.com/blog/host-your-own-docker-registry-with-kamal-2

The short-term solution still requires credentials for another registry during the setup process (or this can be hacked by setting registry.server to github.com 😂 ).

To make the short-term solution easier, would you consider skipping docker login when booting the proxy and accessories?

• It seems like a trivial change to remove KAMAL.registry.login from proxy commands since none of the commands depend on it: https://github.com/basecamp/kamal/blob/main/lib/kamal/cli/proxy.rb#L12
• For accessories, probably want to support accessories from the registry, but maybe there could be a --skip-login flag or something: https://github.com/basecamp/kamal/blob/main/lib/kamal/cli/accessory.rb#L280
  • Or a full solution for #955 could override or disable registry credentials for accessories

(I'm happy to work on the above if the maintainers agree this is a good idea)

[pingortle]

Your workaround using accessories is brilliant! 🤯

I like your idea to simply skip the login with a flag. Would it also suit your needs to have first-class support for deploying a public image? Maybe it's possible today, but I haven't found that feature yet. 🤷‍♂️

If we could do that I could get rid of my Dockerfile and the bootstrap-with-ngrok hack in my example here: https://gist.github.com/pingortle/040098454af630cc6cf6fa78bed9b018

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For context, here are a few related discussions. Just wanted to link them here for discoverability.

• https://github.com/basecamp/kamal/issues/1058
• https://github.com/basecamp/kamal/issues/69
• https://github.com/basecamp/kamal/discussions/510

[hundredwatt]

Would it also suit your needs to have first-class support for deploying a public image? Maybe it's possible today, but I haven't found that feature yet. 🤷‍♂️

It's not possible today unless you can add LABEL service <serice_name> to the public image (or rebuild it yourself with the LABEL) or use my accessory approach, but the latter only supports a single instance.