There are also [other installation methods](https://piku.github.io/install) available, including [`cloud-init`](https://github.com/piku/cloud-init) and [manual installation](https://piku.github.io/install).
**`piku` is considered STABLE**. It is actively maintained, but "actively" here means the feature set is pretty much done, so it is only updated when new language runtimes are added or reproducible bugs crop up.
It currently requires Python 3.7 or above, since even though 3.8+ is now the baseline Python 3 version in Ubuntu LTS 20.04 and Debian 11 has already moved on to 3.9, there are no substantial differences between those versions.
We wanted an Heroku/CloudFoundry-like way to deploy stuff on a few `ARM` boards, but since `dokku` didn't work on `ARM` at the time and even `docker` can be overkill sometimes, a simpler solution was needed.
`piku` is currently able to deploy, manage and independently scale multiple applications per host on both ARM and Intel architectures, and works on any cloud provider (as well as bare metal) that can run Python, `nginx` and `uwsgi`.
* It then looks at a [`Procfile`](https://piku.github.io/configuration/procfile.html) and starts the relevant workers using `uwsgi` as a generic process manager.
You can also deploy a `gh-pages` style static site using a `static` worker type, with the root path as the argument, and run a `release` task to do some processing on the server after `git push`.
`piku` has full virtual host support - i.e., you can host multiple apps on the same VPS and use DNS aliases to access them via different hostnames.
`piku` will also set up either a private certificate or obtain one via [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/) to enable SSL.
If you are on a LAN and are accessing `piku` from macOS/iOS/Linux clients, you can try using [`piku/avahi-aliases`](https://github.com/piku/avahi-aliases) to announce different hosts for the same IP address via Avahi/mDNS/Bonjour.
### Caching and Static Paths
Besides static sites, `piku` also supports directly mapping specific URL prefixes to filesystem paths (to serve static assets) or caching back-end responses (to remove load from applications).
`piku` is intended to work in any POSIX-like environment where you have Python, `nginx`, `uwsgi` and SSH: it has been deployed on Linux, FreeBSD, [Cygwin][cygwin] and the [Windows Subsystem for Linux][wsl].
As a baseline, it began its development on an original 256MB Rasbperry Pi Model B, and still runs reliably on it.
But its main use is as a micro-PaaS to run applications on cloud servers with both Intel and ARM CPUs, with Debian and Ubuntu Linux as target platforms.
### Supported Runtimes
`piku` currently supports apps written in Python, Node, Clojure, Java and a few other languages (like Go) in the works.
But as a general rule, if it can be invoked from a shell, it can be run inside `piku`.