[HN Gopher] Vercel Build Output API: Infrastructure-as-Filesystem
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Vercel Build Output API: Infrastructure-as-Filesystem
Author : leerob
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-07-22 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vercel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (vercel.com)
| diroussel wrote:
| Could this output format be used by others, to deploy to other
| platforms?
|
| I currently use [1] to be able to deploy a nextjs app to AWS with
| API Gateway. Would be nice to have standard patterns for cloud
| deployments for mulitple frameworks.
|
| [1] https://github.com/serverless-nextjs/serverless-
| next.js/blob...
| gav wrote:
| I looked at FAB[1] to support this in the past, it would be
| great if it supported more platforms.
|
| [1] https://fab.dev/
| leerob wrote:
| This could turn into a standard across deployment platforms /
| companies. We'd need to abstract Vercel out (e.g. different
| folder names) and get feedback from others, but I would be open
| to it. Having a standard could help drive interoperability
| between web deployment platforms, which I think is good for the
| entire ecosystem.
| [deleted]
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| The _Browse All Templates -_ link on the Vercel homepage returns
| a 404:
|
| https://vercel.com/new/templates
| steventey wrote:
| Hey, thanks for reporting this! Would love to know if there's a
| way I can reproduce this? We're currently in the process of
| rebuilding our Templates Marketplace so that could be why.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| Thanks for the quick reply! I just clicked the Browse All
| Templates link on https://vercel.com/ but it's working now!
| steventey wrote:
| Gotcha! Thanks a lot for the headsup - I'll do some digging
| into it! :)
| obblekk wrote:
| Vercel never stops impressing me. They're shipping huge new
| features consistently every 3-6 months. The quality of their
| product (we're a user) is generally very high. Seemingly every
| startup I know (other than those creating core web tech) are
| using Vercel. Definitely a company to admire imo.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Cloudflare or someone wanted to
| acquire them soon if they successfully pull off cross-language
| support. Heroku really fumbled the ball here, despite having a
| multi-year headstart.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Apparently they also built a bot (using Vercel functions) to
| track comments on HN re: Vercel, and yours got featured by the
| founder:
|
| https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1550539397241548800
| leerob wrote:
| Will be open-sourcing this soon! Let me know if you're
| interested (lee at vercel.com).
| klohto wrote:
| Not that it wasn't possible before, but quick-deploy Slack
| bot opens the gates for spam upvoting/downvoting either
| from the employees or serves as an easy tool for marketers
| to spam replies about specific topics.
|
| I think open-sourcing it wouldn't be beneficial. More work
| for @dang to moderate the content and feedback to remain
| organic.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| HN already detects voting rings and responds with lower
| weights for the votes from the ring.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| They're also ridiculously good at hiring. So many of the top JS
| people are at Vercel.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I just wish there was a more affordable option. 20$ a month is
| steep for one repo is steep.
| siquick wrote:
| You can get pretty far on the free tier. But $20 a month for
| a superior dev experience is worth it imo.
| impulser_ wrote:
| How is Vercel different from something like DigitalOcean's App
| Platform?
|
| I haven't tried Vercel, but with App Platform it seems like I
| get everything Vercel offers, but on top of that I can add
| managed databases, spaces, functions, and have overall more
| flexibility.
| Havoc wrote:
| Vercel seems geared towards a specific stack / paradigm as
| far as I can tell while DO is more big cloud lite. i.e. build
| blocks like objective storage etc
| tedmiston wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if Cloudflare or someone wanted to
| acquire them soon if they successfully pull off cross-language
| support.
|
| I've also contemplated a Cloudflare acquisition or merger with
| Vercel several times. Some of their products compete with each
| other, but I think they target very different customers.
|
| But maybe this is shifting as Vercel moves towards the back of
| the stack and Cloudflare moves towards the front.
| yomkippur wrote:
| What does Vercel offer that AWS Lambda and its other products
| already provide? I see Vercel has serverless functions but how
| does it compare to Lambda for instance?
|
| edit: I see from reddit discussions it is initially cheaper but
| quickly gets even more expensive than AWS.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/ra1whm/bye_vercel_h...
| teg4n_ wrote:
| Not having to deal with AWS is one major convenience. But with
| any of these kinds of services, you will end up paying a
| premium for the convenience.
| yomkippur wrote:
| what aspect of AWS is inconvenient here? IAM and VPC stuff
| just requires extra knowledge but once you understand it its
| not a hinderance that would get me shopping for a
| replacement.
| viraptor wrote:
| This is kind of like the "why would I use Dropbox instead
| of cron+rsync" comment. There's lots things you have to do
| in AWS that have nothing to do with actually publishing
| your app. IAM, vpc, relevant vpc endpoints, secgroups/nacl,
| lambda, cloudwatch, cloudfront, API gateway, hopefully
| cloudformation/terraform, some wrapper for actually
| deploying the lambda, billing alerts, extra time because
| even though you know how to do this, it's easy to make
| trivial mistake that makes it not work.
|
| Or... Just use vercel or similar packaged solution.
| tylerchurch wrote:
| They're worlds apart (I use both AWS and Vercel).
|
| AWS has everything you could ever need, but that means you
| have a ton of trade offs to consider whenever you want to
| start something new.
|
| I often want a one-off website deployed live on the
| internet to test something. For AWS I'm juggling in my
| head:
|
| - Load Balancers
|
| - API Gateway
|
| - CloudFront
|
| - S3 for static files
|
| - Route 53
|
| - Lambda config (or use Serverless to manage this or maybe
| ECS or EKS or maybe just spin up an EC2 instance...)
|
| - Elastic beanstalk or Amplify instead of or in addition to
| the above?
|
| - Cloudformation or Terraform to manage it? Or just build
| tech debt by doing it all manually?
|
| - And how are we automating deployments? Maybe something
| custom in GitHub actions? I know AWS has some offerings
| here but they were cludgey last time I tried them.
|
| Or with Vercel I:
|
| - Type "vercel" and hit enter in the folder containing my
| web app.
|
| They're completely different worlds.
|
| Sometimes I need the full power of AWS. Often I don't.
| rozenmd wrote:
| that IAM and vpc stuff? imagine not having to know it to
| deploy your stuff.
|
| imagine just having a repo of your web app, and just
| committing via git is enough to get it online, and
| scalable.
| simonw wrote:
| I just ran this out of curiosity to see how Vercel runs Python
| applications these days - here's the code it generated, which
| runs some heuristics to check if your app is using WSGI, ASGI or
| a BaseHttpRequestHandler subclass:
| https://gist.github.com/simonw/8521ba3385279fde4a9878f2ad8d1...
| tedmiston wrote:
| I tried their Python Runtime Beta semi-recently out of similar
| curiosity.
|
| I expected the base Python use case to support common Python
| function deploy setups, say Flask, FastAPI / Starlette, etc.
|
| It didn't seem like that's actually possible (if it is, the
| docs should mention it!)... and instead this is "Advanced
| Usage".
|
| I really don't consider Hello World running in Flask to be
| "Advanced Usage".
|
| But the alternative with the verbosity of using
| BaseHTTPRequestHandler with no framework is just nuts. Of
| course, no one is doing that on other platforms.
|
| Python is still a second-class citizen on Vercel.
|
| Heroku made this smooth... a decade ago... I really don't
| understand why Vercel doesn't make a serious investment in
| Python. It would unlock so much more potential for their
| platform. [Vercel, my email is in bio if you're listening ;).]
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-07-22 23:00 UTC)