The observability space just got a little more complicated for self-hosters. A developer posting on DEV.to documented their experience trying to deploy SigNoz — an open-source observability platform competing with tools like Datadog and New Relic — only to discover that the project's deployment infrastructure had been completely deprecated the same week they sat down to try it.

The Docker-Compose Deprecation Trap

According to the developer's account, their Saturday self-hosting session hit a wall immediately upon checking SigNoz's deploy/ folder. A deprecation notice confirmed what should have been a simple process was now broken: "The install.sh script and the docker-compose manifests have been deprecated." Every tutorial they'd bookmarked over time — likely accumulated across weeks or months of research — was suddenly wrong.

Enter Foundry

SigNoz has migrated its deployment pipeline to Foundry, described as a tool that generates custom deployments for users. This marks a significant shift in how the platform handles self-hosted installations, moving away from manual docker-compose configurations toward an automated setup process. The change means existing users who relied on docker-compose files for customization or infrastructure-as-code integration need to rethink their approach.

Why This Matters for Self-Hosters

Observability platforms walking away from docker-compose is a trend worth watching. Docker-compose has become the de facto standard for self-hosting complex applications — it's battle-tested, well-documented, and integrates with every major orchestration tool. When projects abandon it for proprietary deployment generators, they trade developer flexibility for installation simplicity.

Navigating The New SigNoz Deployment

The developer ultimately found their way through by following Foundry's updated installation path. The experience highlights a broader tension in open-source infrastructure: as projects mature and target enterprise users, they often simplify the "happy path" installation while making advanced customization harder for individual developers and small teams.

Key Takeaways

  • Check deployment documentation immediately before starting any self-hosted project — deprecations can happen overnight
  • Foundry is now SigNoz's official deployment method, replacing docker-compose manifests entirely
  • Existing tutorials and guides for SigNoz should be considered potentially outdated
  • Self-hosting observability stacks requires ongoing maintenance as underlying tools evolve

The Bottom Line

SigNoz made a bet that Foundry would lower the barrier to entry, but in doing so, they broke the mental model thousands of developers already had. Sometimes the map changes while you're still trying to read it.