NOTE: this is on indefinite hiatus, mostly thanks to my disillusionment with the current state of nim.

My attempt to build a simple imageboard.

Goals:

• Simple to deploy: should be a single executable that uses an sqlite3 db. Put it behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy like nginx or caddy and you're in business. Optional s3-like storage is supported.

• Simple to use: UI should be minimal and functional even with JS disabled. textboard is a huge inspiration.

• Simple (and hopefully fun) to develop: prioritize correctness & simplicity over performance in general. Nim + sqlite3 is plenty fast already, and no your shitty Mongolian basket weaving forum does not need to be "web scale".

Dev

nimble install
sudo pacman -S entr
find src -type f -name '*.nim' | entr -rc nimble run --verbose caophim
xdg-open http://localhost:5000

Design choices

src/caophim.nim is the main entrypoint and all state should be managed there. Other files should only define composable, stateless utils.

This project unapologetically utilizes n+1 queries, since they're not a problem with sqlite.

Usage

Server setup

Targets Debian 11 (bullseye).

Dependencies:

sudo apt install imagemagick awscli

S3:

• create your bucket and access id - secret pair
• cp aws/credentials-example aws/credentials
• fill key & secret in credentials file
• cp config.ini.example config.ini
• fill s3 configs

I'll need to write code for auto-generating the aws credentials file using values from config.ini.

How I'm running it so far

I should write up an ansible playbook at some point... I have a private pyinfra setup that works alright, though I don't have any plans to open source it, since that box is also hosting some other stuff.

Anyway, here are the manual steps:

adduser --disabled-password caophim
# [gen key, add pubkey to /home/caophim/.ssh/authorized_keys, chmod 600]
su caophim
wget 'https://github.com/nhanb/caophim/releases/download/v0.1.1/caophim-linux64.tar.gz'
tar -xf caophim-linux64.tar.gz
cd caophim-dist
# [populate config.ini, aws/credentials]

# Setup systemd service
# as root
curl 'https://git.sr.ht/~nhanb/caophim/blob/master/ops/caophim.service' \
     > /etc/systemd/system/caophim.service
systemctl enable caophim
systemctl start caophim
# site should now be live at port 5000.

# Now you need some HTTP reverse proxy that handles TLS. I recommend Caddy:
# [install caddy v2]
# [either cp or symlink from ./ops/caophim.caddy to /etc/caddy/sites-enabled/caophim]
systemctl restart caddy