Bullet

Bullet is a fast and flexible application deployment tool built by Furqan Software. It automates the full lifecycle of deploying containerized applications to remote servers over SSH, without the overhead of a full orchestration platform.

Features

• Server setup: Installs Docker and prepares remote servers for deployments.
• Tarball-based deploys: Packages application code into tarballs, uploads them over SCP, and builds Docker images on the server.
• Program management: Define multiple programs (e.g. web, worker) per application, each running in its own container.
• Scaling: Scale programs up or down with expression-based rules that can factor in host tags and hardware.
• Cron jobs: Manage scheduled tasks backed by systemd timers, with optional healthcheck pings.
• Zero-downtime reloads: Reload containers via signal, command, or restart, with support for pre-reload hooks.
• Environment management: Push environment files to servers.
• Log tailing: Tail container logs directly from the CLI.
• Port forwarding: Forward remote ports to your local machine over SSH.
• Host access: Open an interactive shell, view disk usage, or run top on remote servers.
• Multi-node support: Target multiple hosts per deployment with interactive node selection.
• Release pruning: Clean up old releases to free disk space.

Getting Started

Install

From source:

go install github.com/FurqanSoftware/bullet@latest

Or download a prebuilt binary from the Releases page.

Define a Bulletspec

Create a Bulletspec file in your project root. This defines your application and its programs:

application:
  name: Hello World
  identifier: hello

  programs:
    web:
      name: Hello World Web Server
      command: node index.js
      container:
        image: node:8.1-alpine
      ports:
        - 80:5000

Configure Hosts

Pass hosts directly via flags:

bullet -H 192.168.0.3 <command>

Or create a Bulletcfg.<name> file:

hosts: 192.168.0.3,192.168.0.4
port: 22

Then use it with:

bullet -c <name> <command>

You can also set hosts via environment variables:

export BULLET_HOSTS=192.168.0.3

Set Up a Server

bullet -H 192.168.0.3 setup

This installs Docker and prepares the server for deployments.

Deploy

Package your application as a tarball and deploy:

tar czf app.tar.gz <your files>
bullet -H 192.168.0.3 deploy app.tar.gz

Scale Programs

bullet -H 192.168.0.3 scale web=2

Commands

bullet deploy [tarball]          # Deploy a release (--setup, --environ, --scale)
bullet setup                     # Prepare servers for deployment
bullet status                    # Show container status across nodes
bullet restart                   # Restart all application containers
bullet run [program]             # Run a one-off program container
bullet scale [program=count ...] # Scale program instances
bullet log [program[:instance]]  # Tail container logs
bullet cron:enable [job ...]     # Enable cron jobs
bullet cron:disable [job ...]    # Disable cron jobs
bullet cron:status               # Show cron job status
bullet environ:push [file]       # Push an environment file to servers
bullet forward [local:]remote    # Forward a remote port locally
bullet prune                     # Remove old releases
bullet host:shell                # Open an interactive shell on a server
bullet host:df                   # Show disk usage on a server
bullet host:top                  # Show running processes on a server

See the docs/ directory for detailed documentation.

Editor Support

Bullet ships a JSON Schema for the Bulletspec file. Add this line at the top of your Bulletspec to enable validation and autocompletion in editors that support the YAML Language Server (Zed, VS Code, JetBrains, etc.):

# yaml-language-server: $schema=./bulletspec.schema.json

Shell Completion

Bullet supports autocompletion for bash, zsh, fish, and powershell. It completes command names, flag values (e.g. -c from Bulletcfg.* files), and arguments (e.g. program keys and cron job keys from Bulletspec).

To enable it, add the following to your shell configuration:

Bash (~/.bashrc):

eval "$(bullet completion bash)"

Zsh (~/.zshrc):

eval "$(bullet completion zsh)"

Fish (~/.config/fish/config.fish):

bullet completion fish | source

PowerShell:

bullet completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression

But, Kubernetes?

https://k8s.af/

Acknowledgements

• Nikita Golubev - For the bullet icon