UBCEA Memberships Application

Stack

Frontend

• Next.js
• TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS

Backend

• Golang
• PostgreSQL

Deployment

Production deploys run automatically after CI succeeds on main, or manually via the CD workflow (workflow_dispatch).

VPS setup

The VPS runs the app with Docker Compose. One-time server setup:

1. Install Docker and Docker Compose.
2. Create a deploy directory (this path becomes VPS_DEPLOY_PATH).
3. Add a .env file in that directory with the variables used by deploy/compose.yaml:
   • POSTGRES_USER, POSTGRES_PASSWORD, POSTGRES_DB
   • BACKEND_PORT (default 8080), FRONTEND_PORT (default 3000)
   • Backend settings such as DATABASE_URL, RESEND_API_KEY, SENDER_EMAIL, OAuth credentials, etc. (see backend/.env.example)
4. Log in to GHCR on the VPS so it can pull images:

   echo <GITHUB_PAT> | docker login ghcr.io -u <GITHUB_USERNAME> --password-stdin

5. Add the deploy SSH public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys for the deploy user.

GitHub configuration

Secrets (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions):

Secret	Description
VPS_SSH_KEY	Private SSH key used by the CD workflow to connect to the VPS
VPS_HOST	VPS hostname or IP address
VPS_USER	SSH user on the VPS
VPS_DEPLOY_PATH	Absolute path to the deploy directory on the VPS

Variables:

Variable	Description
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL	Public API URL baked into the frontend image at build time

Deploy flow

On each deploy, the CD workflow:

1. Builds and pushes backend and frontend images to ghcr.io/<owner>/<repo>/backend and ghcr.io/<owner>/<repo>/frontend, tagged with the commit SHA and latest.
2. Copies deploy/compose.yaml to the VPS as a template.
3. Renders the template with the new image tags, pulls images while services are still running, stops services, then starts them. Compose runs migrations as a one-shot container before the backend starts.