GitOps Without Kubernetes: Django with doco-cd, SOPS and age
GitOps is almost always presented with Kubernetes in the background: ArgoCD, Flux, manifests by the hundreds. As a result, many teams deploying on a plain VPS with Docker Compose assume the model does not apply to them. They keep deploying over SSH: git pull, docker compose up -d, crossing their fingers that nobody skips a step. That is a shame, because the core of GitOps has nothing to do with Kubernetes. And for some time now, one tool has been filling exactly this gap: doco-cd, a continuous deployment engine for Docker Compose. Combined with SOPS and age to encrypt secrets directly in the repo, you get GitOps without Kubernetes: a complete pipeline where deploying boils down to git push. This article explains the principle, then walks through the setup on a Django project with several compose files. ...