Editions#

Scope. This page is the canonical reference for the Lesstruct editions: which binary to install, what each one carries, and how to switch between them. For what each module owns, see built-in-modules.md; for how editions are wired in code, see module-development.md.

Lesstruct ships as one codebase, three binaries. An edition is a fixed module list compiled into one binary (composition-root wiring). All editions share the same config.toml schema and the same data directory, so moving between editions is installing the other binary — no migration, no config rewrite.

The three editions#

Blog — the default CMS#

The lesstruct binary. Every first-party module except the commerce stack: identity (users, auth), the comment system, the admin panel, content engine with custom post types, media library, SEO surfaces, the server-rendered content site (site-ssr) with the embedded default blog theme (theme-default), AI text generation (textgen), and the WordPress/Hugo importers — plus the WASM plugin system every edition carries.

Choose this if you run a content site — blog, magazine, company site, documentation — with the admin panel, the SSR frontend, and the static-site exporter.

Core — the headless engine#

The lesstruct-core binary. The engine subset only: users, auth, adminpanel, posttypes-basic, and media, plus the content engine and the plugin system. No comment system, no SEO surfaces, no SSR theme engine, no embedded theme, no AI text generation, no importers.

Choose this if you render your own frontend against /api/v1 — a custom storefront, a mobile app, a decoupled site — and want the smallest binary with no public HTML surface to maintain.

eCommerce — the blog platform plus commerce#

The lesstruct-ecommerce binary. The full blog module list plus the commerce stack — catalog (pricing, variant matrices, stock, SKUs), cart (token-keyed guest carts), orders (checkout, lifecycle, expiry sweeper, invoice PDFs), and payments (transfer-proof verification, Midtrans Snap driver) — with theme-storefront in place of theme-default: product pages, cart, checkout, and order tracking out of the box.

Choose this if you sell online. The demo config.toml works unchanged; the commerce blocks ([catalog], [orders], [payments], [invoice]) are documented in configuration.md.

Comparison matrix#

Module dependencies still apply inside every edition: disabling a module drops everything that transitively requires it (so disabling users cascades away auth, comments, and adminpanel; disabling catalog on eCommerce cascades away cart, orders, and payments). The full cascade rules are in built-in-modules.md and configuration.md.

Installing#

Release binaries ship for the blog edition (lesstruct-<os>-<arch>) and the Core edition (lesstruct-core-<os>-<arch>) on linux, darwin, and windows (amd64, arm64) from the releases page. The eCommerce edition is installed via go install or built from source — no release asset is published for it yet:

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# The default (blog) edition — every module except commerce
go install github.com/aristorinjuang/lesstruct@latest

# The Core edition — the headless engine
go install github.com/aristorinjuang/lesstruct/cmd/lesstruct-core@latest

# The eCommerce edition — blog plus the commerce stack
go install github.com/aristorinjuang/lesstruct/cmd/lesstruct-ecommerce@latest

go install needs v1.2.0 or later — earlier tags predate the publishable module layout. For an older version, use a release binary or build from source.

From source:

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make install          # blog edition + admin panel + CLI into $GOBIN
make build-core       # the Core edition
make build-ecommerce  # the eCommerce edition
make build-server     # blog edition without the embedded SQLite driver
                      # (~6 MB leaner, for PostgreSQL/MySQL deployments)

Switching editions#

Editions share one data directory and one config.toml. To switch, stop the server, install the other binary, and start it against the same directory. Within any edition, [modules] disabled still prunes further — e.g. a blog install with "comments" disabled approximates Core-with-SSR, and an eCommerce install with the commerce modules disabled behaves like the blog edition with the storefront theme.