Deployment

Polis deployment is focussed around docker. We would like to even further simplify the deployment and scalability processes to the point where a user can spin up a new self hosted polis conversation that can scale itself without any technical knowledge. We are currently exploring deployment that utilizes docker swarm.

Get started

ℹ️ In face, all you need is example.env and docker-compose.yml

# Assume you can download files using `wget` package on Linux
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CivicTechTO/polis/refs/heads/edge-civictechto/example.env
wget https://github.com/CivicTechTO/polis/releases/download/deploy-edge/docker-compose.yml
docker compose --env-file example.env up

This will download images built by our CI to skip the building process of Docker images.

Build from source

If you prefer to build from source. Clone the repository and deploy in local.

# Get all code and configuration files
git clone https://github.com/compdemocracy/polis.git
# Enter the correct directory as working directory
cd polis
# Build all docker image and configurate environment for multiple docker instances using `docker compose`
docker compose --env-file example.env up --build 

Troubleshoot

Web server went offline or Cannot connect to postgres server

Deploying the docker images with docker compose up –build often end up ran into network connection issues.

ℹ️ We have no idea why but it only happen on the first time.

Solution: This is resolved by stopping the instances and restarting it by using docker compose down && docker compose up.