I don't know what you are talking about. My production setup is dumber than you would think. A bunch of bash scripts in a git repository. You just do git pull and then run a single bash script. ./app build builds the entire thing. If you want to run it then do ./app start.

Yes you do need to configure some environment variables like in almost any other form of deployment.

Messing around with tar files or flat binaries doesn't work for me. I tried that. I build a python app into an executable with Nuitka but it generates a folder anyway. Ok throw it in a tar file. Nope, doesn't run because the glibc version is too new on the developer machine. Nice try. I have to build it on the target machine. Amazing.