BasePod

CapRover-like PaaS for macOS powered by Podman + Caddy.

Status: WIP — v1 in development.

What

Deploy and manage container-based services (web apps, databases, workers) on a single Mac. BasePod ships as two binaries: basepod-server runs the local control plane, and basepod is the CLI for day-to-day operations.

Inspired by CapRover, which does not run on macOS.

Highlights

• Deploy from tarball, Dockerfile, OCI image, or one-click templates
• Automatic HTTPS via Caddy (Let's Encrypt HTTP-01 or DNS-01 wildcard)
• Blue/green deploys, per-app env vars (encrypted at rest), persistent volumes
• Single admin user + API tokens for CLI/CI
• Bundled + remote one-click app templates (Postgres, Redis, etc.)
• Single server binary with embedded Vue SPA

Docs

• Getting started
• Architecture
• API reference
• CLI reference
• Templates
• Persistence
• Troubleshooting
• Design spec

Build

make build       # builds bin/basepod-server and bin/basepod
make test
make run         # runs the server locally

Requires Go 1.26 for source builds and an Apple Silicon Mac. The installer can install Podman 5+ through Homebrew when it is missing.

Install

Apple Silicon Mac (arm64) only.

Full server + CLI install:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flakerimi/basepod/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

CLI-only install, for managing an existing BasePod server:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flakerimi/basepod/main/scripts/install-cli.sh | sh

Or build from source:

make build && make web
./bin/basepod-server

The installer prints the dashboard URL when it finishes. If you install over SSH, use that printed http://<server-ip>:<port> URL from your browser. The installer chooses the first free port in 8080-8090; override it with BASEPOD_HTTP_ADDR=:9090 if you want a specific port.

On first run, create the admin user in the browser.

The installer places two binaries in /usr/local/bin:

• basepod-server: the launchd-managed server and dashboard
• basepod: the CLI client that talks to the server API

The CLI-only installer places only basepod in /usr/local/bin; it does not install Podman, start the server, or register launchd.

CLI

After creating the admin user in the browser, log in from the terminal:

basepod login --server http://<server-ip-or-domain>:<port>

This stores the server URL and an API token in ~/.basepod/config.yaml. Subsequent commands use that token automatically.

Common commands:

basepod app list
basepod app create my-api --port 3000
basepod app deploy my-api .
basepod app deploy my-api --image ghcr.io/me/my-api:1.2.0 --follow
basepod app logs my-api
basepod app env set my-api DATABASE_URL=postgres://...
basepod app rollback my-api <version>

basepod settings set root_domain=example.com acme_email=ops@example.com
basepod domain add my-api api.example.com

basepod template list
basepod template install postgres my-db POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret

basepod backup -o basepod-backup.tar.gz
basepod logout

Use basepod --help or the CLI reference for the full command list.

Project layout

cmd/basepod-server/    Go server entrypoint
cmd/basepod/           Go CLI entrypoint
internal/              Server packages
templates/             (legacy) — see internal/templates/bundled/
web/                   Vue 3 SPA (built into bin via go:embed)
scripts/               build.sh, install.sh

License

TBD.