

Flynn Beta (YC S14) - dubcanada
https://flynn.io/blog/flynn-beta

======
morgante
Flynn still needs to do a much better job on the documentation front. It's
entirely unclear how to use Flynn. Instead of just having vague
architecture/philosophy discussions, they need very clear explanations.

From the demo/documentation they _do_ have, it's unclear why Flynn is better
than Deis, Heroku, etc.[1]

I had hoped that Flynn was/would be a tool for orchestrating complicated
multi-container apps, not just deploying Procfiles. I don't need Procfiles, I
need something which will let me integrate and orchestrate multiple Docker
containers across multiple nodes. Most/many significant apps don't fit into
the simplicity of Procfiles (we have over a dozen different services, some
with relatively customize environments, all communicating with RabbitMQ
middleware). At least for development, Docker containers have proven to be an
ideal way to manage these services. As of yet, there doesn't seem to be a good
tool for deploying them to production. I wish Flynn would tackle that head on
(and document it!), instead of being yet another generic PaaS.

[1]
[https://github.com/flynn/flynn/tree/master/demo](https://github.com/flynn/flynn/tree/master/demo)

~~~
wiremine
> It's entirely unclear how to use Flynn

I'll go a step further: it's unclear _what_ Flynn is. I read the homepage and
was still confused.

~~~
auvi
I am standing at the same step as you. It is confusing what is Flynn. Maybe it
is CLU (Codified Likeness Utility) created by Kevin Flynn of TRON.

~~~
joeyspn
Flynn.io needs to fight for the user experience... no docs = poor UX

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corobo
I think in this case it's no docs = no UX

I've given it a test but all it's done is cost me a couple of micropennies on
aws so far, I'm nowhere closer to understanding

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dccarmo
I tried reading most of the site and didn't understand what exactly it is. Am
I the only one who doesn't have a clue on what "ops" is/are?

~~~
spitfire
Flynn is open source heroku.

~~~
dk8996
I like this tag line! Maybe Flynn guys should use this.

~~~
bacongobbler
Well, "open source Heroku" implies that they're compatible with Heroku's API.
That means application release management, runtime configuration (config:set),
application collaboration via "sharing"... From what I see in
[https://github.com/flynn/flynn/tree/master/demo](https://github.com/flynn/flynn/tree/master/demo),
half of the API isn't there yet. We'll see how it goes over the next few
months.

~~~
Titanous
We certainly not cloning Heroku's API, but we have most of the things you
describe and much more in our API and CLI, including release management,
configuration, job control, resource provisioning, log access, docker image
releases, interactive and detached one-off processes, etc.

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kevinflo
I feel like this post would benefit from a succinct description of what the
product is either in the title or on the linked page.

~~~
dubcanada
I'm not sure if the title box has enough characters to explain it properly.
Basically it's a PaaS framework that can be hosted on your own environment.

Anyone have any ideas on what to put?

~~~
bnb
Flynn is a (adjective) PaaS platform that can be hosted on your own servers so
you can make it work for you.

Flynn can (verb) as a PaaS platform that allows you to do what you need to
within your existing infrastructure.

Flynn runs on your servers as a PaaS platform that you can build upon to
(whatever a PaaS does).

I don't really know what PaaSes do, but those should work if you find
interesting words (not just generic ones) to put where I've noted. Adding
extremely informative details in a sub heading would be very beneficial.

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dubcanada
I find it almost impossible to figure out what to do with Flynn after I have
installed it (just comparing it to deis, deis on the other hand has a large
amount of documentation). Is there going to be some more documentation on how
exactly stuff is setup and how to manage it now that it is in beta?

~~~
danielsiders
Yep, tons more, soon. For now, start here
[https://github.com/flynn/flynn/tree/master/demo](https://github.com/flynn/flynn/tree/master/demo).
We're moving this and more like it to the docs.

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guybrushT
As others have raised points about need for better documentation and "didn't
understand what exactly it is", I wanted to say that the Story of Flynn is
missing a very clear "Why Flynn?". That seems to be at the root of why others
aren't fully able to understand you. So, Why Flynn?

Some sentences selected from the post: "It regularly took longer to deploy
apps to AWS or our own servers than to write them....It wasn’t just about
deploying stateless web apps, it was scaling them....Ops could manage a single
platform that provided self-serve resources for development, testing, and
production to the rest of the organization...."

I know its not popular to say this: would Google App Engine have solved this,
since it was made for this specific use case? The "ops" could have been
simplified (yes, GAE has problems - there is lock-in, pricing etc. but that
kicks in only after Tent.io has many many users - and that would be a
good/welcome problem to solve.

Maybe I am missing something - but I would really like to understand "Why
Flynn was made?". Thank you in advance for the clarification.

------
danielsiders
Flynn cofounder here, happy to answer any questions

~~~
tekacs
Is ongoing development primarily being funded by your sponsors and do you have
any (public) plans along other paths for the future?

~~~
danielsiders
We're currently raising a VC round (we're in the current YC batch).

We've already done paid support contracts on the enterprise side and are
developing the management service into a SaaS offering.

~~~
dk8996
One thing that I really like with other PasS companies is that they package
that content up -- setup, architecture, documentation of a n-tier application
(I am assuming you already built something like that for contracting work).
How would I create a website with database and caching ect... using your
services.

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anonfunction
I think there is a bug on the pricing page. It appears that the startup plan
is more expensive during beta.

[http://i.imgur.com/CtWIytj.png](http://i.imgur.com/CtWIytj.png)

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boboohaze
But why use Flynn? Getting a CoreOS cluster up and controlling it with Fleet,
and deploying docker images to it, seems quite a bit easier.

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harrisreynolds
Who can come up with a better headline? I like "Open Source PaaS for the
Future"

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ret624lf739til4/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ret624lf739til4/Screenshot%202014-08-13%2018.19.00.png)

A more clear header would help with messaging.

~~~
corobo
Not a huge fan of the "for the Future" bit but the rest at least says or hints
a bit better as to what it is.

I've been following flynn from the start but honestly I'm less sure of what it
is now than I was before it started

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druiid
It appears that download issues with the ruby buildpack still aren't fixed.
Really you guys should be hosting these on your own S3 account as literally
every time I've tried to use Flynn or Deis they are unusable because both
utilities use heroku hosted buildpacks and they're consistently broken
(slugbuilder related I think?).

~~~
bacongobbler
What download issues do you speak of? They work great in Deis' test
infrastructure: [http://ci.deis.io/view/example-apps/job/test-integration-
rub...](http://ci.deis.io/view/example-apps/job/test-integration-ruby-
sinatra/)

~~~
druiid
\-----> Ruby app detected ! ! Command: 'set -o pipefail; curl --fail --retry 3
--retry-delay 1 --connect-timeout 3 --max-time 30
[https://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/heroku-buildpack-
ruby/bu...](https://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/heroku-buildpack-
ruby/bundler-1.6.3.tgz) -s -o - | tar zxf - ' failed unexpectedly: ! ! gzip:
stdin: unexpected end of file ! tar: Child returned status 1 ! tar: Error is
not recoverable: exiting now

I opened an issue request with Deis a while back for the same problem and they
reported it being an upstream issue with slugbuilder.

Edit: Heh, apparently we already talked about this
[https://github.com/deis/deis/issues/1016](https://github.com/deis/deis/issues/1016)

~~~
bacongobbler
Yep. It was because slugbuilder didn't lock buildpacks to a known working
version when you ran a `docker build`. It always pulled master, which may or
may not work. We fixed that up, and we're in sync with Heroku's buildpack
version that's running in prod now:
[https://github.com/deis/slugbuilder/blob/deis/builder/instal...](https://github.com/deis/slugbuilder/blob/deis/builder/install-
buildpacks#L20)

~~~
druiid
Didn't notice the issue get closed. Thanks! I'll re-install Deis again :D

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bthomas
Understand it's hard to explain. I'd list the canonical use cases, so people
know whether to dig in to the docs.

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zbyte64
Flynn lets you tie GIT deployment to a system that uses heroku buildpacks and
launch using Docker containers. But what if I don't want to use a buildpack
but a Dockerfile?

~~~
Titanous
If you have a Docker image on a registry somewhere you can create a release in
Flynn from it using the `flynn release add` command (or the API).

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stevedekorte
Fwiw, I'd find a single line description of what Flynn is helpful. I gave up
trying to find out after seeing a long story on the about page.

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ibisum
Credit-card only option? Sorry, but no thanks. I'll come back to Flynn when I
can pay for it with a method other than credit card. (Startups should not
assume the whole world wants to use credit cards.)

