Portable Migration and Recovery Toolkit for Self-Hosted Services
Fedimove is an open-source toolkit designed to make it easier to move, recover and redeploy self-hosted services across different infrastructures. Many self-hosted services today are difficult to migrate in practice: data, configuration, dependencies and runtime assumptions are often tightly coupled to a specific environment, and moving them safely requires manual, error-prone procedures. Fedimove is intended to address this problem through a practical, reusable software component that helps operators migrate services with less risk and greater predictability.
The project focuses on structured migration and verified recoverability rather than unrealistic claims of seamless portability. In practice, this means supporting controlled export and import workflows, structured migration manifests, configuration mapping, compatibility checks, and restore verification procedures, so that services can be reconstituted more reliably in new environments.
Why Fedimove matters
Service portability is a key requirement for a more open and resilient internet. However, in practice, many users and small providers remain dependent on specific hosting setups because migration is complex, fragile and difficult to validate. Even when backups exist, they do not guarantee that a service can actually be restored and brought back into operation elsewhere.
Fedimove is intended to address this gap by providing a practical toolkit that supports safer migration workflows, reduces operational lock-in, and improves confidence in service recovery.
What the project will deliver
Fedimove is expected to deliver:
- A reusable migration toolkit for self-hosted services
- Structured migration manifests describing service state and requirements
- Support for export and import workflows across different environments
- Configuration mapping and compatibility-checking mechanisms
- Restore-verification procedures to confirm operational recovery
- Initial service adapters for selected self-hosted services
- Documentation, reference workflows, and deployment guidance
- Public technical materials to support inspection, reuse, and further development
How it works
Fedimove is designed to operate between a source environment and a target environment, supporting a structured migration workflow. The toolkit inspects the source service, extracts relevant data and configuration, generates a migration manifest, validates target conditions, and helps reconstitute the service on the destination system.
In simple terms, the intended model is:
Source service -> Fedimove toolkit -> Target service
This allows migration and recovery processes to be carried out in a more structured and verifiable way, without requiring a completely new hosting stack or replacing existing deployment tools.
Expected outcomes
The expected outcomes of the project are:
- Reduced operational risk in service migration and recovery
- Improved portability of self-hosted services across infrastructures
- Greater confidence in restore procedures and service continuity
- Easier adoption of structured migration workflows by operators
- A reusable digital commons component that others can inspect, adapt, deploy, and extend
Open source and repository
Fedimove is intended as an open-source project. The source code, documentation, and related technical materials will be published in a public GitHub repository.
GitHub repository: soon to be available
Project status
Fedimove is currently presented as a proposed open-source effort. The project page will be updated as technical materials, implementation outputs, documentation, and public repository links become available.
Planned work includes:
- Technical design and migration model
- Core toolkit architecture and implementation
- Service adapters and validation workflows
- Restore verification and testing
- Packaging, documentation, and public release
Organisation
Fedimove is developed by Xilbi Sistemas de Informacion SL (XILBI), an SME active in software engineering, digital infrastructures, interoperable systems, and practical development of reusable technical components for real-world operational environments.