Simple docker deployment tactics

Question

Hey guys so I've spend the past few days really digging into Docker and I've learned a ton. I'm getting to the point where I'd like to deploy to a digitalocean droplet but I'm starting to wonder about the strategy of building/deploying an image.

I have a perfect Dev setup where I've created a file volume tied to my app.

docker run -d -p 80:3000 --name pug_web -v $DIR/app:/Development test_web

I'd hate to have to run the app in production out of the /Development folder, where I'm actually building the app. This is a nodejs/express app and I'd love to concat/minify/etc. into a local dist folder ane add that build folder to a new dist ready image.

I guess what I'm asking is, A). can I have different dockerfiles, one for Dev and one for Dist? if not B). can I have if statements in my docker files that would do something like... if ENV == 'dist' add /dist... etc.

I'm struggling to figure out how to move this from a Dev environment locally to a tightened up production ready image without any conditionals.

Answer 1

I do both.

My Dockerfile checks out the code for the application from Git. During development I mount a volume over the top of this folder with the version of the code I'm working on. When I'm ready to deploy to production, I just check into Git and re-build the image.

I also have a script that is executed from the ENTRYPOINT command. The script looks at the environment variable "ENV" and if it is set to "DEV" it will start my development server with debugging turned on, otherwise it will launch the production version of the server.

Answer 2

Alternatively, you can avoid using Docker in development, and instead have a Dockerfile at the root of your repo. You can then use your CI server (in our case Jenkins, but Dockerhub also allows for automated build repositories that can do that for you, if you're a small team or don't have access to a dedicated build server.

Then you can just pull the image and run it on your production box.