Self Host Windmill
Windmill's GitHub repository contains all the necessary files to run Windmill locally, or to self-host it.
We encourage Docker-based deployments, and provide a docker-compose
file to
help you get started.
Docker
Simplified instruction for docker compose in the README.
Use docker compose
and not docker-compose
.
When talking about the compose
, or caddyfile
, we explicitly refer to the
ones on Windmill's GitHub repository.
Using Docker and Caddy, Windmill can be deployed using two files,
(docker-compose.yml
and
Caddyfile
) and in a single command.
Caddy takes care of managing the TLS certificate and the reverse proxy,
Postgres of storage, Windmill-LSP provides editor intellisense. All managed by
one docker-compose.yml
file.
Configuration
Let's assume you wish to deploy Windmill to the windmill.example.com
domain.
This information only needs to be propagated to the docker-compose.yml
file,
using the WM_BASE_URL
environment variable.
Create/edit the .env
file at the root of the project and set your desired
address:
# .env
DB_PASSWORD=supersecret
WM_BASE_URL=windmill.example.com
Setting the WM_BASE_URL
configures Windmill to use it as its base url, but
also configures Caddy to use it as the domain.
Deployment
Once you have setup your environment for deployment, you can run the following command:
docker compose up
That's it! Head over to your domain and you should be greeted with the login screen.
Default e-mail is [email protected]
and the password is changeme
.
Update
To update to a newer version of Windmill, all you have to do is run:
docker compose pull
Or in case you wish to update only the Windmill image, run:
docker compose pull windmill
Database volume is persistent, so updating the database image is safe too.
Helm Chart
We also provide a convenient Helm Chart for Kubernetes based self-hosted set-up.
Detailed instructions can be found in the README file in the official repository of the chart.
If you're familiar with Helm and want to jump right in, you can deploy quickly with the snippet below.
# add the Windmill helm repo
helm repo add windmill https://windmill-labs.github.io/windmill-helm-charts/
# install chart with default values
helm install windmill-chart windmill/windmill \
--namespace=windmill \
--create-namespace
Detailed instructions in the official repository.
Enterprise deployment with Helm
The Enterprise edition of Windmill uses different base images and supports additional features. One important feature is better caching for depencies in a super cache supported by S3.
You need:
- an Enterprise license key
- an AWS account and S3 bucket
- AWS credentials or IAM roles prepared for access from the Windmill worker pods.
See the Helm Chart repository README repository for more details. The exact setup for S3 access will vary according to your environment.
Compile from source
- Navigate to the
frontend
folder (source) and run:npm run install
npm run generate-backend-client
npm run build - Install the LLD Linker.
- Go to
backend
folder (source) and run:SQLX_OFFLINE=true cargo build --release
- The Windmill binary will be at
target/release/windmill
You can run it with the following command:
DATABASE_URL=<your_database_url> ./windmill
Windmill binary will make the assumption that NsJail is in PATH
, Python3 is
available at /usr/local/bin/python3
and Deno at /usr/bin/deno
. It will also
assume that you are connected to PostgreSQL using a superuser. If you cannot use
a superuser, see the following section.
Run Windmill without using a Postgres superuser
Create the database with your non-super user as owner:
CREATE DATABASE windmill OWNER nonsuperuser
As a superuser, create the windmill_user and windmill_admin roles with the proper privileges, using:
psql <DATABASE_URL> -f init-db-as-superuser.sql
where init-db-as-superuser.sql
is
this file.
Then finally, run the following commands:
GRANT windmill_admin TO nonsuperuser;
GRANT windmill_user TO nonsuperuser;