Hosting static site with App Engine, Cloud Build and Hugo

So once in a while I try new platform to host my blog. So far i’ve tried Heroku+Jekyll, VPS+Nginx, Netlify+Hugo.

Every option has its Cons and Pros but this post is about: App Engine + Cloud Build + Hugo.

Requirements

https support
git push style deploys
support for various static site compilers
cheap
fast

Note: if you’re looking for the simplest setup it’s the Netlify, IMO.

App Engine + Cloud Build

satisfies the requirements above:

provides https support out of the box(once the domain is google managed).
Cloud Build can be configured with source repository to compile and deploy the site.
cheap, as App Engine standard is free as long as your site doesn’t go over the free quota
fast, unlike Heroku, initial response times for App Engine instances are, observably, faster(TODO: measure)
customizable build process: easy to tune build and depoyment process with cloudbuild.yaml steps.

There are some cons as well:

more complex machinery: App Engine is an application runtime thus comes with quite a few of bells and whistles that are unnecessary for static sites.
build times are slower: ie a deploy on my VPS setup is <5 seconds. Cloud Build takes 2 minutes.
configuration is limited or requires additional coding.

Prerequisites

create a GCP project or use an existing one.
configure domain and TLS. Google’s managed domains are auto provisioned with Free TLS certificates.
set the daily spend quotas, just to be safe…
configure IAM permissions so Cloud Build is capable deploying App Engine apps: find [email protected] and add “App Engine Admin”, “App Engine Deployer” roles.
configure App Engine for the static app see App.yaml below
create a build trigger for a connected source repository
edit the build trigger and specify the path to the cloudbuild.yaml in your source repository. In my case it’s deploy/cloudbuild.yaml
configure site comilation step; see the cloudbuild.yaml below
configure App Engine deployment step; see the cloudbuild.yaml below

Deployment

git push origin
???
Profit!!!

References

app.yaml

A runtime suitable for static content.

runtime: python27
api_version: 1
threadsafe: true
instance_class: F1
# disable automatic scaling to avoid incurring costs
automatic_scaling:
  target_cpu_utilization: 0.65
  min_instances: 0
  max_instances: 1
  min_pending_latency: 30ms  # default value
  max_pending_latency: automatic
  max_concurrent_requests: 50

# See the reference for more details
# https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/config/appref
handlers:

## static content routing
- url: /
  static_files: public/index.html
  upload: public/*

# hugo generates pages in directories so check for index.html first
- url: /(.*)/
  static_files: public/\1/index.html
  upload: public/*

- url: /
  static_dir: public/

error_handlers:
  - file: default_error.html

cloudbuild.yaml

Build steps using Hugo to compile the site.


substitutions:
  _HUGO_VERSION: "0.52"

images: 
  - 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/hugo-${_HUGO_VERSION}:latest'
  
# https://cloud.google.com/cloud-build/docs/build-config
steps:
# the step needed only only when creating/updating Hugo image
- id: 'budil hugo img'
  name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/docker'
  args: [
            'build',
            '--build-arg', 'HUGO_VERSION=${_HUGO_VERSION}',
            '-t', 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/hugo-${_HUGO_VERSION}:latest',
            '--cache-from', 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/hugo-${_HUGO_VERSION}:latest',
            '-f', 'deploy/hugo.Dockerfile', 'deploy/'
        ]

- id: 'hugo build site'
  name: 'gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/hugo-${_HUGO_VERSION}:latest'
  entrypoint: 'sh'
  args:
    - -c
    - |
      hugo -s ./src
      mv public/ deploy/

- id: 'gcloud deploy app'
  name: gcr.io/cloud-builders/gcloud-slim
  dir: deploy/
  args: ['--project=$PROJECT_ID', 'app', 'deploy', 'app.yaml']

options:
  machineType: 'N1_HIGHCPU_32'

timeout: '120s'

hugo.Dockerfile

Required to build hugo docker image.

FROM alpine:3.5 as build

ARG HUGO_VERSION=0.52
ENV HUGO_BINARY=hugo_${HUGO_VERSION}_Linux-64bit.tar.gz

# Install Hugo
RUN set -x && \
  apk add --update wget ca-certificates && \
  wget -q https://github.com/spf13/hugo/releases/download/v${HUGO_VERSION}/${HUGO_BINARY} && \
  tar xzf ${HUGO_BINARY} && \
  rm -r ${HUGO_BINARY} && \
  mv hugo /usr/bin && \
  apk del wget ca-certificates && \
  rm /var/cache/apk/*

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/hugo"]

GCP Free Quotas

28 instance hours per day
120 build-minutes per day
5 GB Cloud Storage
Shared memcache
1000 search operations per day, 10 MB search indexing
100 emails per day