Aenthill

Aenthill is a command-line tool that helps bootstrapping a Docker project for your web application easily.

Using Aenthill, in a few minutes, you can have:

• Your containers in a docker-compose.yml file ready
• … along with the Traefik reverse-proxy to access your web containers
• Dockerfiles to build your production containers
• … and Kubernetes deployment files to deploy your project
• CI/CD integration to build your containers and deploy them
• … in test environments or in production!

How does it work?

Most project scaffolders rely on a list of template files that are used to generate a project. But this approach is fundamentally limited.

Aenthill does not work like that. Instead, Aenthill relies on a set of programs hosted in separate containers. We call those programs aents.

Working together, these aents will build your project infrastructure. This architecture is very flexible. It means anyone can write its own aent and extend the system.

How does it compare to Helm?

Helm is a Kubernetes only tool that can be used to make Kubernetes deployments reusable. You typically will write Helm deployments if you are a product owner helping clients deploy your application. Writing a Helm deployment requires a good understanding of Kubernetes.

Aenthill on the other end is targetted at web developers that are not expert DevOps. It helps them starting a web application and encompass the whole toolset needed (from docker-compose to image building, CI/CD, etc.).

TheAentMachine

In Aenthill, a colony is a set of aents which are able to work together by sharing a common API.

TheAentMachine is the colony provided by the creators of Aenthill for bootstrapping a Docker project for your web application.