The goal of this project is to create a simple Node package that is capable
of creating customized Dockerfile
s for Node projects and building the
images associated with those Dockerfile
s.
Features
- Generates
Dockerfile
based on a template with many configuration options. - Configuration can be controlled directly by options in
package.json
. - Support for "scopes" and private repositories.
- Support for
yarn
and usingyarn.lock
for deterministic deployments.
Installation
You can install dockergen
either globally using npm install -g dockergen
or as
a dev dependency using npm install dockergen --dev
. If installed as a dev dependency,
the dockergen
bin script will be in your PATH
if running dockergen
from NPM scripts
via npm run ...
.
Usage
Pure command line
Dockerfile
s
Generating All available options can be found via the --help
option, e.g.,:
$ dockergen gen --help
Options:
--help Show help [boolean]
-i, --image Base Docker image [string] [default: "node:latest"]
-e, --env Settable environment variables (NAME=VAL) [array] [default: []]
-x, --expose Ports to EXPOSE [array] [default: []]
-s, --script Scripts to run during build [array] [default: []]
-c, --scope Scope to use for repos [string] [default: null]
-o, --overwrite Overwrite existing Dockerfile [boolean] [default: false]
-t, --test Run tests during build [boolean] [default: true]
-r, --runcmd NPM script to launch application [string] [default: "start"]
Building Docker images
Normally, one would use docker build -t <NAME> .
to build a docker image from an
existing Dockerfile. But because we want to supporting building using private
repositories AND doing so as part of the build process (as opposed to installing
Node packages when the container is start), we need to add some build arguments.
The typical build command would look something like:
docker build --build-arg NPM_TOKEN=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 -t <NAME> .
To help streamline this, the dockergen
script features an additional build
command
that adds these extra command line arguments. The equivalent dockergen
command would
be:
$ dockergen build --name <NAME>
The token is taken from the environment variable NPM_TOKEN
to avoid having to hardwire
it into any files that might be version controlled or otherwise shared with others.
The command line arguments for dockergen build
are:
$ dockergen build --help
Options:
--help Show help [boolean]
-n, --name Name to give image being built [string] [required] [default: null]
-k, --dryrun Perform a dryrun build [boolean] [default: false]
-d, --docker Docker command [string] [default: "docker"]
npm run
Using As mentioned previous, if dockergen
is installed as a dev dependency, it can be called
via npm run ...
. An example of using dockergen
from the scripts
section of package.json
might look like this:
"scripts": {
...
"gen": "dockergen gen",
"image": "dockergen build",
}
Note the absence of any command line switches? Such switches can be avoided by building them
directly into package.json
. By default, dockergen
looks for a "dockergen"
section
in package.json
. Any fields in that object are used as the default values for the command
line arguments (note that env
is a special case...it appears as an object in package.json
but as an array of strings of the form <NAME>=<VAL>
when specified via the command line).
N.B. if you want to check that dockergen
is picking up default values from package.json
,
simply run dockergen gen --help
. The default values shown by --help
include any values
found in package.json
.
sdocker
Use with Note that dockergen build
includes a command line option --docker
.
This allows you to use an alternative program as the Docker client.
For example, you can substitute sdocker
(an alternative client that supports SSH tunneling)
using this option. This allows you to avoid the complication of
using TLS certificates for secure use of Docker and instead rely on
SSH keys.