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Show HN: I built a tiny-VPS friendly RSS aggregator and reader (github.com)

187 points by rook1e_dev ↗ HN
Hi, folks.

As an RSS user, I tried Inoreader and Feedly, then ended up self-hosting a Miniflux instance on my homelab. A few months ago, I moved to another city and had to shut down my homelab for a long time, so I couldn't access my local miniflux. It was quite inconvenient. I decided to self-host my RSS aggregator on a tiny VPS or PaaS such as fly.io. However, Miniflux requires a PostgreSQL database, which may isn't suitable for a tiny VPS instance.

So I built fusion with Golang and SQLite. It contains basic features such as Group, Bookmark, Search, Automatically feeds sniffing, Import/Export OPML file, etc. It uses about 80MB of Mem and negligible CPU usage (metrics here: https://imgur.com/a/EJIdevn).

Feel free to share your questions and suggestions.

BTW, I also built an online tool to sniff RSS links from a URL. (https://rss-finder.rook1e.com/)

48 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] thread
QasimK
This is what self-hosted software should be. An app, self-contained, (essentially) a single file with minimal dependencies.

Not something so complex that it requires docker. Not something that requires you to install a separate database. Not something that depends on redis and other external services.

I’ve turned down many self-hosted options due to the complexity of the setup and maintenance.

holsta
> Node 21 with NPM > Sveltekit, shadcn-svelte > Echo, GORM > gofeed

And the documentation literally specifies it requires docker.

How did this become "minimal dependencies"?

bArray
Almost guaranteed this doesn't build in ~2 years and you would likely need to know all of those languages to fix it.
Klonoar
I don't think it's that bad, but skimming that repo leaves me feeling like the frontend stack used makes things far more complex than they need to be.

Still, seems like a great project. I added it to my list of things to check out whenever I have a free weekend... if I ever get there.

skydhash
Encountered the same problem last year. My tech stack was React Native as I was mostly building stuff that has few interactions and it was easy to get something good on both platforms. Then, I got a notice from Google about API version. Updating the project was such a nightmare due to compatibility issue. Some libraries were abandoned. Some had breaking changes. It was easier to write the two native versions than to deal with npm mess.
cxr
For any project that you depend on that has opted into the NPM quagmire, you really should be running `git add --force ./node_modules` and periodically pushing a copy of this to a branch/repo that you control instead of depending on upstream, since most projects that ostensibly use Git tend to thwart its entire raison d'etre—hobbling its ability to do effective version control by abusing .gitignore for their overlay VCS of choice (i.e. the "package manager").
skydhash
The issue was not finding the libraries code. The issue was the churn. So one day, you have a (in my case, small) set of libraries to get things going. Then 2 years after, compilation issues as they all have different requirements. So you have to find another common intersection between them and the node/react-native versions. I should have vendored some in the project.

In Android, libraries are much stabler. Deprecated functions are picked by the IDE and an alternative is often presented in the comments. I'd much prefer to have big libraries (as we have tree-shaking) especially when dealing with frameworks instead of the bazillion packages when trying to do anything with npm.

cxr
> So one day, you have a (in my case, small) set of libraries to get things going. Then 2 years after, compilation issues as they all have different requirements. So you have to find another common intersection between them and the node/react-native versions.

That's what the whole version control thing that I mentioned is good for. Check out a two-year old copy that resolves to a faithful reproduction of whatever it was you were able to use successfully when you first checked it in.

bArray
Been precisely there with NPM, where you're left with a near un-buildable mess. So much good software has been lost.
eviks
The docs literally specify it doesn't

"Deploy with a single binary"

holsta
It would be nice if people realised that not everything is Linux (or Windows or Mac).
mynegation
It explicitly states small VPS as a target, so - yes - Linux. I realize you can deploy non-Linux image on VPS, but hosting docker containers on Linux is the default
royjacobs
Where would it end, though? Should the developer also provide build instructions for Haiku and AmigaOS?
rook1e_dev
Hi. Just to clarify.

> Node 21 with NPM > Sveltekit, shadcn-svelte

The front-end things are used during the build process. You don't need them when deploy.

> And the documentation literally specifies it requires docker.

Fusion can be deployed as a *single binary*. Docker is just the recommended way. Maybe we need to make documentation clearer.

drusklo
Looks good! I am curious on why you recommend to deploy using docker, being a single binary with no external dependencies I find the deployment simple enough.

I write all my personal projects using Go and one of the things I most like is that it compiles to a binary without external dependencies.

rook1e_dev
That's mostly for Windows users.

The SQLite driver uses cgo, so we use both Ubuntu and Windows Server in CI to avoid cross-compiling. However, we still can't confirm that it's 100% ok on Windows. If any weird bugs occur on Windows, we don't have much experience or energy to deal with them.

The Docker image is based on Debian, we are more familary with it.

drusklo
That makes a lot of sense, thanks for taking the time to explain it.
acheong08
For the SQLite driver, check out the one by modernc for pure Go
holsta
It's an interesting difference in backgrounds, maybe? I tried to build this on OpenBSD where we don't have docker and we use 'make' instead of random shell scripts.

For what it's worth, this is from the build log:

    error code 1
    error path /home/holsta/3rdparty/fusion/frontend/node_modules/@sveltejs/kit
    error command failed
    error command sh -c node postinstall.js
    error /home/holsta/3rdparty/fusion/frontend/node_modules/rollup/dist/native.js:84
    error       throw new Error(
    error             ^
    error
    error Error: Your current platform "openbsd" and architecture "x64" combination is not yet supported by the native Rollup build. Please use the WASM build "@rollup/wasm-node" instead.
rook1e_dev
It seems like the compiler used in project's front-end framework doesn't support OpenBSD.

There is nothing we can do about it at the moment. Maybe in the future we will change the tech stack to reduce the complexity of the front-end.

remram
Why recommend Docker if it's a single binary?

And what's good about a single binary if you're going to recommend Docker?

fragmede
it's still easier to manage docker containers if they're 50 MB instead of 300MB and if the rest of the fleet is being managed via docker-(whichever) then there's something to be said about consistency. managing everything through one interface is easier than remembering all the special cases. but to each their own.
remram
The image is 200 MB... There's 100 packages in there, including bash, perl, ext filesystem utilities, and the APT package manager.

Compared to all that, the current PHP app I use for RSS looks lighter. Especially since my VPS already runs PHP and PostgreSQL.

rook1e_dev
You can use the standalone binary (18 MB) to run it. Docker is just one deployment method.
remram
But then why...

Hold on, I'm back to my earlier comment.

fragmede
Consistency is key. it's easier if you're using docker to run all the things, then docker ps shows all the things running, instead of having to check docker, and then also check this other thing over here that's different
ralferoo
I don't even like docker, but it still doesn't sound that terrible to me. It's an option. Use docker or use the single binary, but presumably if you like docker and have it set up for other things, you'll just use that rather than rolling your own startup scripts etc.

I do something a bit similar for my own project - it's a single binary REST server, but I still package it up with dpkg-deb and deploy that to a private apt repo so I can update it easily on the servers with "apt-get update && apt-get install blah" and that fits nicely with my existing processes and I can just add the repo and dependency to my cloud-init setup. If I used docker, I'm sure I'd find his docker image the easiest path to getting it installed and updated.

remram
The emphasis in my questions above was on recommend.
generallee5686
Agreed. Lately I'm coming across self-hosted services that not only require docker, they essentially require a docker-compose file full of many other dependencies.

The other thing that blows my mind is how many of these self-hosted applications require mysql/postgres instead of just using sqlite.

phubbard
This is awesome! I currently run FreshRSS on a pi5 and this looks like a nice, non-PHP alternative.
beepbooptheory
Looks really great. I can't tell from the readme, but can this produce its own feed which is the aggregation of the other feeds? That is the feature I always want and don't see too much with apps like this.
rook1e_dev
Hi, thanks for the suggestion! Currently it doesn't have that feature.

You can create an issue about it on GitHub so we can evaluate how much it is needed.

nedrylandJP
I've been using Slack /feed (ugh) to get RSS notifications because I want pings from certain feeds. I have not found a different, easy lightweight way to do this.
visil
Looks cool! I'm currently using Selfoss, which is fine in terms of requirements/maintenance, but if I didn't, I'd probably give this a try!
pacifika
Does it produce a rss feed itself?
rook1e_dev
Currently it doesn't have that feature.

You can create an issue about it on GitHub so we can evaluate how much it is needed.

gcascio
Cool project! Also it's welcome resource to learn, since I just started learning Go and was trying myself at an RSS reader (https://stille.app).
rsolva
Looks really nice! Not sure if it is intentional, but "stille" means "silent" in Norwegian :)
Xeoncross
Simple, no-fuss self-hosted server software should really be Rust, or Go / C++ if needed.

All three of them allow you embed the UI assets (media, JS, CSS) into the binary and all three work great with key/value stores (badger, leveldb, rocksdb, etc..) or SQLite.

There is no install. No setup. No packages to download first. Just a simple binary that respects OS signals, has crazy good throughput, and uses so little memory that your router can run it.

Please, consider moving your JVM/Node.js/Electron project to one of these as a chance to jump into really performant software.

(There are also a lot of RSS servers written in Rust/Go/C on Github: https://github.com/search?q=rss+host+language%3AGo+language%...)

acheong08
This one is written in Go. The front end in Svelte is built into static files and served by Go. The docker container just makes it easy to build but they do distribute a single static binary
watermelon0
Node.js / PHP / dotnet / JVM projects can be bundled to a single binary file.

Sure, the binaries are bigger, and they cannot run on routers, but you can easily run many of them simultaneously on RaspberryPi, which is usually the bare minimum HW people use to self-host.

Performance wise, difference should be negligible for most use cases, and allows people to write software in the language that's most suited for them and the project.

Xeoncross
> Performance wise, difference should be negligible for most use cases

I think you mean unnoticeable (or similar); the difference in performance (memory usage and CPU cycles) is certainly not negligible.

bigiain
You might have seen this already, but Rachel By The bay has a few recent blog posts on how feed readers commonly get things wrong, and a service she's got to "score" your feed reader based on it's observed behaviour:

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/05/27/feed/

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/05/29/score/

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/05/30/fs/

Don't be "that guy" who releases software that once deployed widely creates "thundering herds" that knock unsuspecting websites down <glares at Mastodon>

djfergus
Great project. Spun the docker version up on an Oracle always free VPS instance (server class: potato) in a few seconds and it runs great with my imported OPML with a few hundred feeds. As the enshittification of feedly continues I'm keen to find a replacement.

Am I missing the "mark all as read" button? That would be helpful vs going through 13 years of old posts and marking read page by page (albeit quickly at 500 at a time).

rook1e_dev
You can custom the page size by params in url ( ?page_size=1000).

But large page size can cause page performance problems.