compose-watcher

Cli that restarts you docker compose services when a file inside one of its volumes changes.

Useful for faster developement with containers that expose behaviour based on mounted files.

To use with compiled languages place the compilation step in the command field.

Example usage

• graphql api restart when schema file changes
• graphql api mocks based on schema file (like this one)
• Every container that generates code and exposes a server based on a config file
• Nodejs container restarts when the src folder changes, recompiling with tsc
• Mongoke restarts when config schema changes

Install

pip3 install compose-watcher

Usage

Use the directories you want to track as service volumes.

Also consider using init: true in the compose service definition for faster killing of processes.

To not stop the docker-compose logs command, there should be always a running container.

version: '3'

services:
  api:
    build: node_api
    command: sh -c 'tsc --incremental && node index.js'
    volumes:
      - ./node_api/src:/src

Then execute compose-watcher to watch changes.

compose-watcher -f docker-compose.yml --timeout 5

TODO add extension filter TODO dont block the event receiving thread when restarting

How it works

After running the compose-watcher command all the volumes mounted on every service are tracked for change, when a change happens the service where the volume is mounted is restarted toghether with the services in the depends_on filed. Then the other services that have the restarted service as a dependency in depends_on are restarted too.