Hosting

Hosting with Docker

Docker allows to build, package and run your applications developed with GenHTTP on any server, whether it is on your NAS at home or a Kubernetes cluster in the cloud.

As GenHTTP is built on top of .NET, we can use the base images provided by Microsoft to setup our build chain. For a list of available base images, see their Docker Hub page.

Creating a new Dockerfile

Create a new file named Dockerfile in the root directory of your repository and paste the following content:

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:11.0-alpine AS build

# uncomment those lines to enable globalization / localization features
# RUN apk add --no-cache icu-libs tzdata
# ENV DOTNET_SYSTEM_GLOBALIZATION_INVARIANT=false

WORKDIR /source

# copy csproj and restore as distinct layers
COPY Project/*.csproj .
RUN dotnet restore -r linux-musl-x64

# copy and publish app and libraries
COPY Project/ .
RUN dotnet publish -c release -o /app -r linux-musl-x64 --no-restore

# final stage/image
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/runtime:11.0-alpine

# or FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:11.0-alpine for Kestrel

ENV DOTNET_EnableDiagnostics=0 \
    DOTNET_gcServer=1 \
    DOTNET_TieredPGO=1 \
    DOTNET_ReadyToRun=1

WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=build /app .

ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "Project.dll"]

EXPOSE 8080

This assumes that you named your project Project. With this file you can use the commands in the previous section to build and run your project. GenHTTP currently targets .NET 10 and .NET 11, so 10.0 images work just as well - pick whichever matches the target framework of your project.

If you are hosting on the Ioxide engine, keep in mind it needs .NET 11 and relies on io_uring, which is provided by the host’s Linux kernel, not the container image - it is unavailable on hosts with an older kernel or on container runtimes that block the io_uring syscalls (e.g. some hardened or gVisor-based environments), regardless of which .NET base image you pick.

Managing dependencies

Typically, your web application will have some dependencies such as databases or a redis server. docker compose allows you to define and maintain the whole infrastructure needed by your app in a single file.