15 posts tagged with "guide"

Every service in a Fibe template is one of exactly two kinds, and the difference decides everything downstream: whether Fibe clones a repo, whether it runs a build, whether you can edit a file and watch the page reload, and whether a typo in a label hard-fails your launch. The kinds are static (runs a published image) and dynamic (source-backed — Fibe clones, builds, or mounts a Git repo). Most templates are a mix: a dynamic app service in front of a couple of static dependencies.

Here's the part people get wrong: the kind isn't something you declare. There is no fibe.gg/type label. Fibe derives it from the labels you set. Get the signals right and the classifier does the rest; get them subtly wrong and you'll see errors like Service 'web' has a build directive but lacks a fibe.gg/repo_url label. This guide walks the dividing line, then shows you how to wire each kind with real YAML you can copy.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about template errors: most of them are easy once you know who is complaining. Fibe doesn't validate your template in one big pass. It runs a series of layers, each one authoritative for a narrow scope, each one with its own vocabulary. A YAML parser and a launch API say "this is wrong" in completely different dialects. If you can read an error and instantly think "ah, that's the schema layer" or "that's the compiler, not the schema," you stop guessing and start fixing.

This guide walks the layers in order, shows you the exact class of mistake each one catches, and gives you the smallest change that makes it green. The theme throughout: Fibe fails fast and fails specifically, and the earlier a layer catches your problem, the cheaper it is to fix.

A Fibe template is a Docker Compose file with a sprinkling of labels. That's the whole trick. You don't learn a new config language — you annotate the Compose you already know, and the annotations all live under one namespace: fibe.gg/*. Set fibe.gg/port: 3000 on a service and it gets a public HTTPS URL. Set fibe.gg/production: "false" and Fibe mounts your repo into the container so edits show up live. Twenty labels, four jobs.

The catch is that the namespace is strict. An unknown fibe.gg/* key isn't ignored — it's a hard parse error that names the offending service. That's deliberate (a typo'd fibe.gg/prot should fail loudly, not silently route nothing), but it means you want the exact spellings, the exact value rules, and the handful of "label X requires label Y" rules in front of you. This post is that lookup table, grouped the way you actually reach for them.

Most of your stacks are supposed to stay up. A web app, a worker, a dev server — you launch it, it serves, you keep it running. But a lot of the work you actually run against a project is the opposite shape: it should start, do one thing, and stop. Tests. A migration. A nightly backup. CI on a push. For that work, a long-running Playground is the wrong tool — it has no idea when it is finished, so it just sits there, holding resources, waiting for a URL that nobody is going to hit.

A Trick is Fibe's answer for the second shape. It is the same environment engine as a Playground — same Compose file, same Marquee, same logs and terminal — but Fibe treats it as one-shot: it runs the watched service to completion, records whether that service exited cleanly, tears the containers down, and keeps the result. This guide walks you through building one from scratch, with a real test-runner example, and explains the three things people get wrong the first time.

You already have a docker-compose.yml. It runs on your laptop, it has a web service and a database, and you've typed docker compose up enough times to have it memorized. The promise of Fibe is that the same file — almost unchanged — becomes a launchable environment with a real HTTPS URL, logs, and a terminal, running on a host you control. No Kubernetes manifests, no rewrite, no new DSL to learn.

The trick is that a Fibe template is a Compose file. You don't convert it into something else; you add a few labels to the services that need them, and Fibe reads those to handle routing, TLS, and lifecycle for you. This post walks the minimal additions on a small, real example, explains what each one buys you, and ends with you clicking Launch and getting a URL.