Deploying Apps — Reference

This page is the detailed reference for custom apps. For the push-to-deploy overview, see Deploying Your App in Getting Started.

Deploy from the portal

1. Go to portal → Apps.
2. Fill in the deploy form: App Name (lowercase, alphanumeric + hyphens, e.g. my-api), Image (full registry path, e.g. registry.compacthive.dev/<project>/my-api:latest), Port (the port your app listens on inside the container).
3. Click Deploy.

CompactHive creates a Kubernetes Deployment, Service, and Ingress for your app, reachable at https://<your-slug>-<app-name>.compacthive.dev.

Resource defaults

Custom apps get a default request of ~25m CPU / 64Mi memory if you don't set one. If you don't set an explicit memory/CPU limit, the namespace's default limit applies (200m CPU / 256Mi memory) — raise it on the Apps page if your app needs more headroom, within your tier's overall quota.

App limits per tier

Update or delete a running app

On the Apps page, click your app to expand its details. You can update the image (triggers a rolling update), replicas, and environment variables. Deleting an app removes its Deployment, Service, and Ingress — registry images are not deleted (manage those separately from the Registry page).

End-to-end example

This walkthrough takes an empty repo to a running app. The same process works for any language with a Dockerfile — this example uses Node.js.

server.js

const http = require('http');
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/html' });
  res.end('<h1>Hello from CompactHive!</h1>');
});

server.listen(port, () => console.log(`Listening on :${port}`));

Dockerfile

FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY server.js .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]

1. Push server.js, Dockerfile, and a .woodpecker.yaml (see CI/CD Pipelines) to your Forgejo repo — or, on GitHub (beta), connect it and run Settings → "Set Up" to add CI.
2. Push. Woodpecker clones the repo, builds the image with Kaniko, and pushes it to registry.compacthive.dev/<project>/<repo>:latest.
3. Go to portal → Apps, enter the app name, the image above, and port 3000, then click Deploy.
4. Your app is live at https://<your-slug>-<app-name>.compacthive.dev. Every subsequent push rebuilds and (with auto-deploy on) redeploys it automatically.