I'm running OSX and Docker with the help of boot2docker.
From my understanding boot2docker is a lightweight linux distro that is running the docker containers. I have some Ubuntu containers that I use to run and test projects that should specifically run well on Linux.
However every small code change from my host text editor of choice, requires me to re-build image and re-run the container. Run the app and confirm that the change I made didn't break something.
Is there a way for me to open a Docker container FS folder in a text editor from my host machine? (a.k.a Remote edit?)
Have any of you guys done this? Any ideas will be awesome. I think about setuping SFTP or SSHD on the Docker container, but I would want your opinion?
What I often do is, in development, mount the source code of the application to its usual place in a volume. Then, I set the command (or entrypoint) of the container to a script that launches it in "development mode" (for example, by using nodemon for a node.js application, setting RAILS_ENV=development
in Rails, and so on).
Volumes do work on Mac OS X (and I assume Windows) under boot2docker or docker-machine, with the caveat that you need to be working somewhere beneath your home directory.
For a concrete example, here's a repository that I set this up in. The ingredients:
script/dev
is my "dev-mode" entrypoint. It launches the main application under nodemon.
- When I launch the container, I mount the source directory into the container as a volume and set
script/dev
as the command. (I'm using docker-compose here to launch and link in an upstream dependency, so I can do everything in one command.)
With those two things in place, I can run docker-compose up
, make a source change in whatever editor I choose on my host, save the file, and the service within the container auto-reloads to bring my changes into effect. Presto!