Yes, when compared to extreme complexity, compose is simpler. But it's hardly simple.

I'll happily try anything simpler than that if you give me an idea what that might be.

Not trying to be salty or anything – I really think Compose hits the sweet spot of abstraction which is less complex than both the monstrosities I listed and the ad hoc Bash scripts copying code over SSH and restarting services approach (so, the other extremity of declarative v. imperative).

so I guess you are on Docker Swarm?

Actually yeah! A single node is usually enough for me though, but I like the ability to throw in more nodes as needed (more or less painlessly, as long as you properly guard services that need persistent volumes with a label constraint).

Shameless plug: I also make a Docker Swarm dashboard, check it out: https://lunni.dev/

I am on docker swarm, too, and I like it.

Lunni? cool, thank you for sharing it, I'll give it a try

How to navigate the docs? in https://lunni.dev I only reach https://lunni.dev/docs/install/ while I see a lot of good docs https://gitlab.com/lunni/lunni.dev/-/tree/master/docs ...maybe not ready for the website?

Huh, that's weird – probably a bug in my docs pipeline somewhere. Looking into it rn

Edit: custom CSS for the homepage breaks navigation on inner pages on desktop. Should be fine now. Thanks for pointing this out!