Hop3 - Open source platform as a service

Build status:

About

Hop3 is an open source platform as a service: it enable you to deploy and manage your applications seamlessly. It is designed to be simple, secure, and easy to use.

The project is hosted on both SourceHut and GitHub.

TOC

• Status
• Overview
• Goals
• Features
  • Web-Based Management Interface
  • User Management and Single Sign-On (SSO)
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • Automated Backups and Restore
  • Domain Management and SSL Certificates
  • Modular Design
  • Comprehensive Network Management
  • Security and Resilience Enhancements
  • Distributed, Agent-Based Architecture
  • Orchestration and Automation
  • Technology Stack
  • Supported OS
• Getting Started
• Development and Contribution
  • Development Environment
  • Development and Delivery Pipeline
    • CI/CD Integration
    • Package Management
    • Compliance and Transparency
  • Contributing
  • Community Engagement
  • Additional Notes
• Roadmap
  • P0 (MVP, Q2 2024):
  • P1 (Q4 2024):
  • P2 (Q1 2025):
  • P3 (Q2 2025):
  • P4 (Q3 2025):
• Documentation
• Copyright, Credits and Acknowledgements
  • Authors
  • Licensing / REUSE Compliance
  • Funding
• What's the story behind the name?
• Links / References

Status

Warning

This code is still evolving quickly, and not meant for production yet.

Version 0.2.0 (branch stable) is the first version that can be used to deploy a few simple web applications. It is not yet feature-complete. It is already used to host a couple of live applications.

Version 0.3 (branch main) is the current development version. It is currently undergoing a very large refactoring (spliting the code base into multiple sub-projects, using a plugin architecture, etc.). It is not yet usable.

=> If you want to use Hop3, please use the stable branch.

=> If you want to contribute to Hop3, please use the main branch.

Overview

Hop3 is an open-source platform designed to enhance cloud computing with a focus on sovereignty, security, sustainability, and inclusivity.

It aims to facilitate access to cloud technologies for a diverse range of users, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), non-profits, public services, and individual developers. By leveraging robust web, cloud, and open source technologies, Hop3 enables these groups to deploy and manage web applications efficiently and securely.

Goals

• Sovereignty: Empowers users to maintain control over their data and infrastructure, reducing reliance on centralized cloud services.
• Security and Privacy: Adopts a secure-by-design approach, integrating advanced security measures and ensuring compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).
• Environmental Sustainability: Incorporates eco-design principles to reduce the environmental footprint of cloud computing, advocating for sustainable digital practices.
• Openness and Collaboration: Developed as an open-source project to encourage community-driven innovation and improvement.
• Inclusivity and Accessibility: Ensures the platform is accessible to a diverse audience, including those with different abilities, through comprehensive documentation and support.

Features

(Some of these features are still in development.)

Web-Based Management Interface

• Centralized Management: Hop3 offers a powerful and intuitive web-based interface, providing centralized control over applications, users, and system settings. Administrators can manage infrastructure, monitor performance, and configure settings from a single dashboard, enhancing efficiency and user experience. The dashboard includes detailed real-time analytics and event logs, ensuring full visibility over operations.

User Management and Single Sign-On (SSO)

• Integrated LDAP Support: Hop3 integrates seamlessly with LDAP, enabling centralized authentication and user management. This allows organizations to maintain consistent user policies and permissions across multiple applications and systems.
• Single Sign-On (SSO): Hop3 simplifies user access with SSO capabilities, allowing users to authenticate once and gain access to multiple services and applications. This improves security by reducing the need for multiple credentials and streamlining access control management.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

• Granular Permissions: Hop3’s RBAC system enables precise control over user access. Administrators can define user roles and assign granular permissions to limit access to specific applications, resources, or actions. This ensures compliance with organizational security policies while reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
• Audit Logging: The RBAC system provides detailed audit logs of user actions and access history, ensuring traceability and accountability for security audits.

Automated Backups and Restore

• Automated Data Protection: Hop3 offers robust data protection through automated backups and restore mechanisms. Administrators can schedule regular backups to prevent data loss and easily restore systems in case of failure. Backup processes can be customized based on retention policies, ensuring flexibility for different business requirements.
• Disaster Recovery: The integrated restore functionality ensures minimal downtime in the event of failures, allowing for rapid recovery and continuity of operations.

Domain Management and SSL Certificates

• Simplified DNS Management: Hop3 includes tools for easy domain name management, providing DNS configuration that enables users to map their domain names to services hosted on Hop3.
• Automated SSL Management: Ensures secure communication by automating the management of SSL certificates through integrations with services like Let's Encrypt. This simplifies the process of obtaining, renewing, and managing certificates, ensuring encryption for data in transit without manual intervention.

Modular Design

• Pluggable Architecture: Hop3’s modular architecture allows for flexibility in feature deployment. Administrators can add, configure, and manage modules independently, tailoring the platform to specific use cases. This modularity supports a wide range of environments and ensures the system can scale as needed.
• Customizable Functionality: Users can extend the functionality of Hop3 through a variety of plug-ins, ensuring that the platform evolves with organizational needs.

Comprehensive Network Management

• Integrated Network Services: Hop3 includes extensive network management capabilities, offering services such as firewall configurations, VPNs, DHCP, DNS, and proxy management. These features ensure that Hop3 can securely manage traffic and connections across distributed applications and infrastructures.
• Secure Network Policies: The platform allows administrators to implement strict network policies, enhancing security across cloud and edge environments.

Security and Resilience Enhancements

• Advanced Security Features: Hop3 incorporates robust security measures, including real-time monitoring, encryption for data in transit and at rest, and proactive threat detection. Built-in security modules provide continuous surveillance of application performance and system vulnerabilities.
• Redundancy and Failover: Hop3 ensures high availability through redundancy and failover mechanisms. If one node or service fails, the system automatically shifts workloads to backup resources, ensuring uninterrupted service.
• Monitoring and Alerts: Hop3 includes a real-time monitoring system with alert capabilities. Administrators receive notifications when performance thresholds are crossed, allowing for proactive issue resolution.

Distributed, Agent-Based Architecture

• Decentralized Control: Hop3 utilizes a distributed agent-based architecture for decentralized data storage and processing. This enhances system resilience and ensures that operations are spread across multiple nodes, reducing the risk of failure and improving sovereignty over data and infrastructure.
• Fault Tolerance and Scalability: The platform’s architecture supports fault tolerance and scalability, allowing seamless integration of new nodes. As additional resources are added, the system autonomously integrates them into the orchestration engine, ensuring smooth scaling and self-healing capabilities.

Orchestration and Automation

• Intelligent Orchestration: Hop3’s built-in orchestration engine manages distributed applications across cloud, edge, and IoT environments. By automatically deploying, scaling, and allocating resources, the engine optimizes performance without requiring external platforms like Kubernetes.
• Dynamic Scaling: Hop3 enables real-time, automatic scaling based on performance metrics and demand. This feature dynamically adjusts resource allocation to maintain optimal application performance, preventing over- or under-utilization of resources.
• Task Scheduling and Compute Offloading: The platform intelligently schedules tasks and offloads compute-heavy workloads from resource-constrained devices to more powerful cloud infrastructure. This maximizes efficiency and ensures that tasks are completed in the most suitable environment.
• AI/ML Workflow Automation: Hop3 integrates AI/ML workflow management, automating the orchestration of data pipelines, model training, and inferencing tasks. The system dynamically allocates computational resources to optimize performance across the AI/ML lifecycle.
• Live Migration: Supports seamless live migration of running services between nodes without downtime. This ensures continuous service availability even during maintenance or infrastructure changes by leveraging checkpointing and stateful migration.
• Automated Deployments: Hop3 simplifies application deployment by integrating with CI/CD pipelines. Automated workflows allow for continuous deployment, reducing manual intervention and enabling rapid iteration of new features.
• Workload Management: Hop3 provides advanced workload management capabilities, implementing policies to determine how applications should be distributed across environments. This ensures that workloads are prioritized and resources are allocated efficiently across cloud, edge, and IoT nodes.

-> More details

Technology Stack

Hop3's technology stack is carefully chosen to support its goals without relying on conventional containerization tools like Docker or Kubernetes. Instead, it focuses on alternative, lightweight solutions that align with the project's principles of efficiency and sovereignty. The stack includes:

• Lightweight Isolation: Utilizes lean isolation technologies privided by POSIX operating systems, and improved by technologies such as Nix or Guix, to ensure efficient resource use and reproducible builds.
• Decentralized Architecture: Employs a decentralized model for data storage and processing to enhance sovereignty and resilience.
• Security Tools: Incorporates a suite of security tools designed for continuous monitoring, proactive threat mitigation, and compliance with the CRA.
• Energy-Efficient Computing: Adopts strategies and technologies aimed at minimizing energy consumption across all operations.
• Open Standards and Protocols: Committed to open standards to ensure interoperability and prevent vendor lock-in.

Supported OS

We aim to support a wide range of operating systems, including:

• Linux: Ubuntu, Debian, Archlinux, Rocky, Fedora, NixOS, Guix.
• BSD: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD.

We run CI tests on the SourceHut platform, which supports a wide range of open source distributions and operating systems. This is a work in progress, and we welcome contributions to fix issues with the current tests or to expand the list of supported OS. See: .build for the CI scripts, and https://builds.sr.ht/~sfermigier/ for current build status.

Getting Started

To begin using Hop3, follow these introductory steps:

1. Prerequisites: Familiarize yourself with basic cloud computing concepts and the specific technologies Hop3 employs for virtualization and security.

2. Installation:

   • Clone the latest version of Hop3 from the official repository: git clone https://github.com/abilian/hop3.git
   • Follow the installation instructions in the docs/installation.md to set up Hop3 on your system.

3. Configuration: Configuration options can be found in the config directory. Adjust these settings to suit your environment and deployment needs.

4. Documentation: For detailed information on setup, architecture, and usage, refer to the docs folder. This resource includes comprehensive guides and best practices.

Development and Contribution

Contributions to Hop3 are highly encouraged, whether it involves fixing bugs, adding features, or enhancing documentation. The development and delivery pipeline is designed to be hermetic, reproducible, and highly responsive, integrating modern cross-platform functional package management with continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD). This ensures that the development process is transparent, secure, and efficient.

Development Environment

To develop Hop3, you will need to set up a Python development environment (tested under various variants of Linux, and MacOS). The project uses Python 3.10+ and some common Python tools for environment and dependency management. We assume you are already familiar with these prerequisites.

• Poetry: You must have Poetry installed. We are in the process of phasing out Poerty in favor of uv, but for now, you need to have Poetry installed.
• uv: You need uv installed. Run brew install uv or run the installer.
• nox: You need nox installed. Run uv tool install nox.
• Just: You need Just installed. Run brew install just or cargo install just.

You can check your environment by running python3 scripts/check-dev-env.py or make check-dev-env, assuming you have make installed.

• NixOS/Nix: If using NixOS or Nix, you can use the provided shell.nix file to set up a development environment.

• Test Automation: We use nox for test automation. You can run nox to execute all tests, or nox -l to list available sessions.

• Development Tools: We use abilian-devtools for various development tasks. This includes make targets for common tasks, such as running tests, formatting code, and checking for typing issues. Run make help to see a list of the main available targets.

Development and Delivery Pipeline

To ensure a hermetic, reproducible, and highly responsive internal delivery process, Hop3 integrates modern cross-platform functional package management with CI/CD. This approach leverages Nix to make the entire dependency tree transparent and validatable, enhancing the reliability and security of the delivery pipeline.

CI/CD Integration

• Continuous Integration: Implement CI pipelines to automatically build and test code changes, ensuring that all code is continuously validated and ready for deployment.
• Continuous Delivery: Automate the deployment process to ensure that new features and updates can be delivered quickly and reliably to production.

Package Management

• Nix Package Management: Use Nix for package management to achieve deterministic builds, minimize dependency conflicts, and ensure reproducibility. Nix provides a consistent environment for building and deploying applications, making it suitable for even the most critical environments.

Compliance and Transparency

• Software Bill of Materials (SBOM): Automatically generate compliance-ready CycloneDX Software Bill of Materials using tools like Genealogos. This ensures that all dependencies are transparent and verifiable, aiding in compliance and security audits.

Contributing

Please refer to the following key documents for contribution guidelines:

• Getting Started
• Core Values
• Contributing
• Governance
• Code of Conduct
• Licenses

Community Engagement

Engage with the Hop3 community:

• GitHub Issues: For bug reports and feature suggestions.
• Matrix Chat: Join the live discussion on Matrix at #hop3:matrix.org.

The following tools will soon be available:

• Community Forums/Discussion Boards: For discussions, questions, and community support.
• Mailing List: Subscribe to receive updates, announcements, and participate in discussions.

Additional Notes

• Documentation: For detailed information on setup, architecture, and usage, refer to the docs folder. This resource includes comprehensive guides and best practices.
• Continuous Improvement: We welcome feedback and contributions from the community to continuously improve Hop3. Your participation is key to the success of this open-source project.

Roadmap

Here's the current roadmap for Hop3. Priorities and timelines are subject to change based on community feedback, business priorities and funding.

See also the informal TODO list.

P0 (MVP, Q2 2024):

Initial goal: just enough to deploy Abilian SBE.

Features, UX:

• First working version (static sites, python apps, demo apps)

Doc:

• Fix REUSE config
• Basic Documentation / READMEs / etc.

Infra, QA, DX, refactorings:

• Add e2e tests (make test-e2e)
• Basic tests and sample apps
• Basic CI (on SourceHut)
• Basic plugin architecture (using, e.g. pluggy)
• Nix dev env (support for nix-shell)
• Test automation (using nox)
• Make src/hop3/run/uwsgi.py into a class

P1 (Q4 2024):

Features:

• Reorganize code base into sub-projects (monorepo)
• Start multi-OS support (Ubuntu, Archlinux, Fedora, NixOS, Guix, FreeBSD...)
• Deploy a few more useful apps: Abilian SBE, more...
• Add postgres, redis, etc. lifecycle support using plugins
• Improve Python builder (support for poetry, pipenv, uv, etc.)
• Manage external services (databases, mail, etc.)

Infra, QA, DX, refactorings:

• Unit and integration tests
• Refactor CLI (using argparse)]
• Switch to uv (from poetry)
• Split class Deployer. Introduce "DeployStep" and "DeployContext" classes.
• Fix all typing issues (mypy and pyright)
• Introduce new plugins (where it makes sense)
• More end-to-end tests, examples
• CI on GitHub
• e2e CI tests

P2 (Q1 2025):

Features:

• Nix builds
• Nix runtime
• Backup / Restore
• Web App / portal
• More apps
• Monitoring
• (Pluggable) Alternatives to uWSGI, NGINX, ACME, etc.
• Support for (or migration from) Heroku, Render, Docker Compose, Fly… config files,
• Unified logging
• CLI
  • Use an API server (WIP)
  • Review the UX/DX
  • Good looking logging (cf. https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/python-parallel-output/)

Infra, QA, DX, refactorings:

• Reorganize monorepo further
• Improve plugin architecture, add working events
• Agents (for distributed deployments)
• Dedicated infra for e2e tests

P3 (Q2 2025):

Features:

• Unified login (LDAP / IAM)
• Container / VM support
• Target other platforms (e.g. SlapOS, NixOS, Guix, etc.)
• Security (Firewall, WAF, better isolation, etc.)
• Multi-server support
• Orchestrator
• Kubernetes support

P4 (Q3 2025):

Features:

• Workload placement
• Nomad support

Documentation

See the docs directory for detailed information on Hop3's architecture, installation, and usage.

Will soon be deployed at https://doc.hop3.cloud.

Copyright, Credits and Acknowledgements

Authors

Hop3 contains code from Piku, which shares some of the goals of Hop3 / Nua but also has some significant differences in goals and principles, as well as in architecture (Hop3 is modular and pugin-based, Piku is a single-file script).

Hop3 also contains code from Nua, written by the Abilian development team, and contributors. The two projects share most goals and principles, except Nua is based on containers and Hop3 is not. The two projects may ultimately merge in the future (or not).

Other inspirations include:

• Dokku
• fig aka docker-compose

The following people have contributed to Hop3:

• Stefane Fermigier has created and maintains Nua and Hop3.

• Jérôme Dumonteil has contributed to and maintans Nua.

• Rui Carmo (and other Piku contributors) for the original Piku.

• Abilian is the company behind Nua and Hop3.

Licensing / REUSE Compliance

Hop3 is licensed under the AGPL-3.0 License, except for vendored code. See the LICENSE file for more information.

Here are the REUSE compliance results for Hop3 (as of 2024/07/25):

• Bad licenses: 0
• Deprecated licenses: 0
• Licenses without file extension: 0
• Missing licenses: 0
• Unused licenses: 0
• Used licenses: CC0-1.0, BSD-3-Clause, AGPL-3.0-only, CC-BY-4.0, MIT
• Read errors: 0
• Files with copyright information: 310 / 310
• Files with license information: 310 / 310

Congratulations! Your project is compliant with version 3.2 of the REUSE Specification :-)

Funding

This project is partly funded through the NGI0 Commons Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 101135429. Additional funding is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

More information here: https://nlnet.nl/project/Hop3-Nixified/

What's the story behind the name?

"Hop3" (or more precisely "Hop^3" or "Hop cubed") is a pun on "Hop, hop, hop!" which is a French expression used to encourage quick action or to hurry someone up. It's akin to saying "Let's go!" or "Hurry up!" in English. It can also convey a sense of enthusiasm or encouragement to get moving or to proceed with something. It generally carries a light, motivating tone.

Links / References

• Hop3 on PyPI
• Hop3 on GitHub
• Hop3 on SourceHut (mirror)
• Live Discussion
• Nua (Hop3's predecessor)
• Piku (Hop3's inspiration)
• Sailor (Another fork of Piku)
• Abilian (Hop3's sponsor -> buy support from us)
• Abilian SBE (One of the applications that can be deployed with Hop3 - Soon)