Stack Orchestrator allows building and deployment of a Laconic Stack on a single machine with minimial prerequisites. It is a Python3 CLI tool that runs on any OS with Python3 and Docker. The following diagram summarizes the relevant repositories in the Laconic Stack - and the relationship to Stack Orchestrator.

To get started quickly on a fresh Ubuntu instance (e.g, Digital Ocean); try this script. WARNING: always review scripts prior to running them so that you know what is happening on your machine.

For any other installation, follow along below and adapt these instructions based on the specifics of your system.

Ensure that the following are already installed:

• Python3: python3 --version >= 3.8.10 (the Python3 shipped in Ubuntu 20+ is good to go)
• Docker: docker --version >= 20.10.21
• jq: jq --version >= 1.5
• git: git --version >= 2.10.3

Note: if installing docker-compose via package manager on Linux (as opposed to Docker Desktop), you must install the plugin, e.g. :

mkdir -p ~/.docker/cli-plugins
curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.11.2/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose
chmod +x ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose

Next decide on a directory where you would like to put the stack-orchestrator program. Typically this would be a "user" binary directory such as ~/bin or perhaps /usr/local/laconic or possibly just the current working directory.

Now, having selected that directory, download the latest release from this page into it (we're using ~/bin below for concreteness but edit to suit if you selected a different directory). Also be sure that the destination directory exists and is writable:

curl -L -o ~/bin/laconic-so https://github.com/cerc-io/stack-orchestrator/releases/latest/download/laconic-so

Give it execute permissions:

chmod +x ~/bin/laconic-so

Ensure laconic-so is on the PATH

Verify operation (your version will probably be different, just check here that you see some version output and not an error):

laconic-so version
Version: 1.1.0-7a607c2-202304260513

Save the distribution url to ~/.laconic-so/config.yml:

mkdir ~/.laconic-so
echo "distribution-url: https://github.com/cerc-io/stack-orchestrator/releases/latest/download/laconic-so" >  ~/.laconic-so/config.yml

If Stack Orchestrator was installed using the process described above, it is able to subsequently self-update to the current latest version by running:

laconic-so update

The various stacks each contain instructions for running different stacks based on your use case. For example:

• self-hosted Gitea
• an Optimism Fixturenet
• laconicd with console and CLI
• kubo (IPFS)

• compose: Docker Compose on local machine
• k8s: External Kubernetes cluster (requires kubeconfig)
• k8s-kind: Local Kubernetes via Kind - one cluster per host, shared by all deployments

Stacks can live in external git repositories. Required structure:

<repo>/
  stack_orchestrator/data/
    stacks/<stack-name>/stack.yml
    compose/docker-compose-<pod-name>.yml
  deployment/spec.yml

# Create deployment from spec
laconic-so --stack <path> deploy create --spec-file <spec.yml> --deployment-dir <dir>

# Start (creates cluster on first run)
laconic-so deployment --dir <dir> start

# GitOps restart (git pull + redeploy, preserves data)
laconic-so deployment --dir <dir> restart

# Stop
laconic-so deployment --dir <dir> stop

stack: stack-name-or-path
deploy-to: k8s-kind
network:
  http-proxy:
    - host-name: app.example.com
      routes:
        - path: /
          proxy-to: service-name:port
  acme-email: admin@example.com
config:
  ENV_VAR: value
  SECRET_VAR: $generate:hex:32$   # Auto-generated, stored in K8s Secret
volumes:
  volume-name:

A route may set websocket: true to direct WebSocket upgrade traffic at a different backend port than plain HTTP on the same host+path (the Solana RPC convention — wss:// at the same URL as https://):

network:
  http-proxy:
    - host-name: rpc.example.com
      routes:
        - path: /
          proxy-to: node:8899
        - path: /
          proxy-to: node:8900
          websocket: true

Because the k8s Ingress API cannot express header-based routing, SO generates a small Caddy mux ({deployment}-ws-mux) that splits on the Upgrade header; the Ingress routes the host+path to the mux. The mux image defaults to caddy:2-alpine and can be overridden with a top-level ws-mux-image: spec key. At most one plain and one websocket route may share a host+path — violations fail deploy create with an error. A websocket route without a plain twin sends all traffic at that path to the websocket backend.

On kind deployments with no acme-email configured (no certificates can exist), SO sets caddy.ingress.kubernetes.io/disable-ssl-redirect: "true" on the generated Ingress so HTTP routes work. When acme-email is set or TLS is otherwise active, the normal HTTPS redirect applies.

See the CONTRIBUTING.md for developer mode install.

Native aarm64 is not currently supported. x64 emulation on ARM64 macos should work (not yet tested).