u/kickpush1

I’m working on pack, a simple way to deploy self-hosted apps.

I always liked the old Zeit/Vercel now flow: run one command in a project and get a URL that is persistent, immutable and does not need platform specific code.

I wanted something similar for myself, so I am working on pack.

The approach I chose is single-file executables. It builds your app into one file, uploads, and runs it.

Node, bun, deno, go, rust, zig and c/c++ all support single file executables so that part was actually pretty straightforward. The most complex part was handling port pooling, caddy setup and inactive instances.

Using single-file executables keeps server setup very minimal and makes it easy to run many small apps on a cheap VPS. It also removes the need to configure node or any other runtime on the server.

Feedback and PR's welcome!

In light of the ongoing npm supply chain compromises, I built safe-install:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/@gkiely/safe-install

It brings a couple of protections I wanted from npm but are not built in.

Similar to Bun’s trusted dependencies, it lets you disable install scripts and define a list of dependencies that are allowed to run build/install scripts:

https://bun.com/docs/guides/install/trusted

It also supports blocking exotic sub-dependencies, similar to pnpm’s `blockExoticSubdeps` setting:

https://gajus.com/blog/3-pnpm-settings-to-protect-yourself-f...