Docker sync to decrease start times

Nov 21, 2020 · psilore

Install docker-sync to decrease start times and increase “responsiveness” when developing in a containerised environment on macOS.

Docker-symc

tl;dr:

I met a brick wall about 1 month ago, thrown in a dev environment which was dockerised to the bone. Me, with almost no experience too, got the feeling I was 5 years old and handed “A Practical Guide to the UNIX System” and expecting a coloring book.

The monkey in me, shouted “-this is even better! More buttons to push”. Now in the present, with some time spent in the project. Not so great.

It takes about 10 minutes to start a clean project. What? 10 minutes. That cant be right. Well, I usually never question why its “seems” broke or borken. Little did I know then, but the solution I found was Docker sync. (Maybe I found this too late, as of the time of writing this article, I do not know. It could have dire consequences)

Problem:

So what was the problem I was facing? Well, if I understood it correctly. On macOS and Windows, docker run in a virtualized environment. This have its drawbacks specially when you are not on a Linux machine. I am still reading up about this.

When restarting fresh or updating containers with rewriting code, i.e add new packages, implementing bugs/code =). It could take up to 10 minutes, really tedious.

My solution: (1 of them, for me, atleast)

Structure

  vanilla/   # → Root of example 
  ├── docker/                   # → Data for containers
  │   └── strapi         
  ├── src/                      # → Source files
  │   └── Source files  
  ├── .env                      # → Environment files
  ├── .docker-compose-dev.yml   # → Setup documents/files for editor  
  ├── .docker-sync.yml          # → Basic sync file  
  ├── .docker-compose.yml       # → Services used in project
  └── README.md                 # → Webpack configuration

In this example I will only be syncing webserver and cms. I have not figured out cached yet. So db is for another article.

Install

Install “Docker sync”
```
gem install --user-install docker-sync
```

Create a “docker-sync.yml” file, example

version: "2"
syncs:
    vanilla: # <--- Sync
    notify_terminal: true
    src: "./"
    sync_excludes: [".git", ".idea", "node_modules"]

Create a “docker-compose-dev.yml” where you add the volumes in your project.

version: "2"
services:
    nginx: 
    volumes:
        - vanilla:/app:nocopy # <--- Where to, if I understood it correctly
    strapi: 
    volumes:
        - vanilla:/app:nocopy # <--- Where to, if I understood it correctly

volumes:
    vanilla: # <--- This points to what I want to sync in the sync file
    external: true

Running the containers sync
```
docker-sync-stack start
```
Run in background
```
docker-sync start
```
Wait until sync command is finished, then start your project with the compose files.
```
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose-dev.yml up
```

Thats it, and in my case the speeds went from 4 minutes down to 3-4 seconds. Not much 4 minutes. But when you need to restart and test from a clean “git clone”. Those times add up, and become alot of wait time.

Thanks to freepik for awesome icons!