Packaging & Distribution¶
This guide covers how to package MCP Gateway for deployment in various environments, including building production containers and generating releases.
📦 Production Container (Podman or Docker)¶
Build an OCI-compliant container image using:
make podman # builds using Containerfile with Podman
# or manually
podman build -t mcpgateway:latest -f Containerfile .
Or with Docker (if Podman is not available):
make docker # builds using Containerfile with Docker
# or manually
docker build -t mcpgateway:latest -f Containerfile .
A lite image is also available for use in production, see Containerfile.lite
🔐 Run with TLS (self-signed)¶
This uses self-signed certs from ./certs/ and runs HTTPS on port 4444.
🛠 Container Run (HTTP)¶
This runs the container without TLS on port 4444.
📝 Versioning¶
MCP Gateway uses semantic versioning (MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH) and the version is defined in:
You can bump the version manually or automate it via Git tags or CI/CD.
📁 Release Artifacts¶
If you need to ship ZIPs or wheels use the project build tooling:
Outputs land under dist/. You can then:
- Push to PyPI (internal or public)
- Upload to GitHub Releases
- Package in a
.deb,.rpm, etc.
📂 What's in the Container?¶
A typical image includes:
- Gunicorn running with
mcpgateway.main:app - All code, static files, and compiled assets
You can override settings using environment variables at runtime.