Selfhosted

Just go nginx, anything else is faffing about. Busybox may not be security tested, so best to avoid on the internet. Php is pointless when its a static site with no php. Id avoid freenginx until its clear that it is going to be supported. There is nothing wrong with stock nginx, the fork is largely political rather than technical.

The answer is get a minimum linux image, add nginx or apache, and put your content on the relevant place. (Basically, your third option.)

Do not bother about the future of nginx. Changing the web server on that image is the easiest thing in the world.

I personally package the files in a scratch or distroless image and use https://github.com/static-web-server/static-web-server, which is a rust server, quite tiny. This is very similar to nginx or httpd, but the static nature of the binary removes clutter, reduces attack surface (because you can use smaller images) and reduces the size of the image.

I just use nginx in docker. It runs from a Pi4 so needs to be lightweight. I'm sure there are lighter httpd servers to use, but it works for me. I also run nginx proxy manager to create a reverse proxy and to manage the certificate renewal that comes from Let's Encrypt.

caddy can serve the files and deal with SSL certificates in case you put this in a public domain.

I see from your other comments that you're already running nginx in other containers. The simplest solution would be to make use of one of them. Zero overhead since you're not adding any new container. 🙂

You mentioned you're using NPM, well NPM already has a built-in nginx host that you can reach by making a proxy host pointed at http://127.0.0.1:80 and adding the following to the "Advanced" tab:

location / {
  root /data/nginx/local_static;
  index index.html;
}

Replace the root location with whatever dir you want, use a volume option on the NPM container to map the dir to the host, put your files in there and that's it.

The busybox one seems great as it comes with shells. php looks like it would add some issues.

Personally since I use go, I would create a go embedded app, which I would make a deb, rpm, and a dockerfile using "goreleaser"

package main

import (
	"embed"
	"net/http"
)

//go:embed static/*
var content embed.FS

func main() {
	http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		// Serve index.html as the default page
		http.ServeContent(w, r, "index.html", nil, content)
	})

	// Serve static files
	http.Handle("/static/", http.StripPrefix("/static/", http.FileServer(http.FS(content))))

	// Start the server
	http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

Would be all the code but allows for expansion later. However the image goreleaser builds doesn't come with busybox on it so you can't docker exec into it. https://goreleaser.com/customization/docker/

Most of the other options including the PHP one seem to include a scripting language or a bunch of other system tools etc. I think that's overkill

The simplest way is certainly to use a hosted service like GitHub Pages. These make it so easy to create static websites.

If you’re not flexible on that detail, then I next recommend Go actually. You could write a tiny web server and embed the static files into the app at build time. In the end, you’d have a single binary that acts as a web server and has your content. Super easy to dockerize.

Things like authentication will complicate the app over time. If you need extra features like this, then I recommend using common tools like nginx as suggested by others.

If your looking for a small size you could build a custom image with buildroot and lighttpd. It is way, way overkill but it would be the smallest.

For something easier use the latest image of your web server of choice and then pass though a directory with the files. From there you can automate patching with watch tower.

I’ve always used an nginx alpine image and have been very happy with it.

Not sure how this fork business is turning out and I have also heard conflicting opinions on wether to care or not…

If you do wish for something simple that is not nginx I’m also very happy with caddy, which can also handle ssl certificates for you, if you plan to make it publicly reachable.

I just use nginx alpine, if freenginx proves to be the better option later it should be fairly trivial to switch the base image.

Err, FROM webserver + COPY /path/to/content /path/to/server/directory? You don't event expect users, what's there to discuss?

Forget about docker. Run caddy or some similar webserver that is a single file next to the assets to serve.

I've read that you're trying for minimal resource overhead.

Is lighttpd still a thing? Back in the day I used it to deliver very simple static Http pages with minimal resource usage.

I found a docker image with like 4 mb size but being two years old I don't know how well maintained lighttpd is these days.