Usage as a library/goroutine

[tomberek]

Part of the single-server approach and deployment could be made even easier if litestream ran embedded in the application itself. For a Go-based application, It can be run as a goroutine. Some examples or pathways to easy adoption with this style would be a great addition to https://litestream.io/guides/

import "github.com/benbjohnson/litestream"

func main() {
    go litestream.RunIt(filename,"s3://bucket/key")
    ... rest-of-application
}

(It's also very possible that this is already solved in a way I'm not aware of.)

[benbjohnson]

Thanks, Tom. It is possible to embed as a library, however, it's GPL3-licensed (which can affect the embedder's software's license) and I'm not making a commitment on the public API right now. Once Litestream hits 1.0 then I'll write some docs for how to embed it in an application.

On the other hand, I like that Litestream is an operational concern instead of a development concern. I find it easier if I don't need to worry about additional dependencies while I'm writing an application.

[beriberikix]

@benbjohnson recently created a sample embedding Litestream as a library: https://github.com/benbjohnson/litestream-library-example

[benbjohnson]

Thanks for posting that, @beriberikix. One thing I’ll add is that we’ve moved from a GPL license to a more permissive Apache 2 license with Litestream.

[tomberek]

Wonderful, thank you. Should make this use-case applicable in more environments.

[tomberek]

I think that embedding this functionality is similar to the idea of embedding DB functionality. Simplifies service dependencies and so on. While some may balk at the GPL constraint; that’s your choice.

Either way, thanks for the work on the software that tries to reduce overall complexity; the trend these days has been to pile on more complexity for little gain.

[aschrijver]

I'm also interested in embedding. +1 for the idea.

Either way, thanks for the work on the software that tries to reduce overall complexity; the trend these days has been to pile on more complexity for little gain.

This is very true. I like how SQLite + Litestream fits the tenets of the Small Technology Foundation by Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbag (I informed Aral about Litestream). Smalltech ("small is beautiful, simple is elegant") is where I'd like to go, in combination with hybrid decentralization (federation + p2p).

(Note, the S3 storage fits less with smalltech, and its why I commented #12 (reply in thread))