Docker compose for production and development

Question

So I use Python+Django (but it does not really matter for this question)

When I write my code I simply run

./manage.py runserver 

which does the webserver, static files, automatic reload, etc.

and and to put it on production I use series of commands like

./manage.py collectstatic
./manage.py migrate
uwsgi --http 127.0.0.1:8000 -w wsgi --processes=4

also I have few other services like postgres, redis (which are common for both production and dev)

So I'm trying to adapt here docker(+ -compose) and I cannot understand how to split prod/dev with it.

basically in docker-compose.yml you define your services and images - but in my case image in production should run one CMD and in dev another..

what are the best practices to achieve that ?

Answer 1

You should create additional docker-compose.yml files like docker-compose-dev.yml or docker-compose-pro.yml and override some of the original docker-compose.yml configuration with -f command:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose-dev.yml up -d

Sometimes, I also use different Dockerfile for different environments and specify dockerfile parameter in docker-compose-pro.yml build section, but I didn't recommend it because you will end with duplicated Dockerfiles.

Update

Docker has introduced multi-stage builds feature https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/multistage-build/#use-multi-stage-builds which allow to create a Dockerfile for different environments.