The Dockerfile

Each Docker image is defined by a Dockerfile, that describes what is in the image and how containers created from it should be built.

The Dockerfile is simply a text document, containing all the commands that would be issued on the command-line to build an image - in short, the Dockerfile defines an environment.

The Dockerfile is built automatically, and populated with appropriate commands (see below). However, you can also add any commands you wish to the Dockerfile, for example to install system packages, or to configure the environment.

Important

The Dockerfile executes its commands in sequence. This means that commands to install Node (for example) must come before commands to run Node packages.

How the Dockerfile is automatically populated

Hashes (#) in the Dockerfile indicate a comment. Sections within angle brackets are autogenerated by the Divio Control Panel, and may be updated or changed on deployment without warning.

Removing these wrapping tags will prevent a section being populated or changed.

The empty Dockerfile at project creation

The Dockerfile starts life at project creation thus:

# <WARNING>
# </WARNING>

# <DOCKER_FROM>
# </DOCKER_FROM>

# <NPM>
# </NPM>

# <BOWER>
# </BOWER>

# <PYTHON>
# </PYTHON>

# <SOURCE>
# </SOURCE>

# <GULP>
# </GULP>

# <STATIC>
# </STATIC>

These sections are in effect placeholders for Docker commands and configuration that will be used to define the project later.

The <WARNING> section

The <WARNING> is always populated.

# <WARNING>
# Everything within sections like <TAG> is generated and can
# be automatically replaced on deployment. You can disable
# this functionality by simply removing the wrapping tags.
# </WARNING>

The <DOCKER_FROM> section

This is determined by the project’s base project version. If you update the base project in the project’s General Settings in the Control Panel, this will be updated on the next deployment.

For a project built on the aldryn/base-project:py3-3.23 image, corresponding to the Base Project: Python 3 v3.23:

# <DOCKER_FROM>
FROM aldryn/base-project:py3-3.23
# </DOCKER_FROM>

The <NODE> section

This section will be supplied by a Boilerplate that includes Node components, for example in the django CMS Sass Boilerplate.

An example that uses other files supplied by the Boilerplate (such as install.sh) to set up the Node environment:

# <NODE>
ADD build /stack/boilerplate

ENV NODE_VERSION=6.10.1 \
    NPM_VERSION=3.10.10

RUN bash /stack/boilerplate/install.sh

ENV NODE_PATH=$NVM_DIR/versions/node/v$NODE_VERSION/lib/node_modules \
    PATH=$NVM_DIR/versions/node/v$NODE_VERSION/bin:$PATH
# </NODE>

The <NPM> section

If package.json (specifying Node packages that should be installed) is present in the root of the project, then instructions will be inserted to copy it to the root of the image and install the packages.

# <NPM>
# package.json is put into / so that mounting /app for local
# development does not require re-running npm install
ENV PATH=/node_modules/.bin:$PATH
COPY package.json /
RUN (cd / && npm install --production && rm -rf /tmp/*)
# </NPM>

The <BOWER> section

If both bower.json and .bowerrc are present in the root of the project, then the deployment process will insert:

# <BOWER>
COPY bower.json .bowerrc /app/
RUN bower install \
    --verbose \
    --allow-root \
    --config.interactive=false
# </BOWER>

The <PYTHON> section

If requirements.in is present in the project, then at deployment time the Control Panel will ensure that this section contains appropriate instructions to handle installation of Divio Cloud addons and other packages. The exact contents of this section will depend on the project, for example:

# <PYTHON>
ENV PIP_INDEX_URL=${PIP_INDEX_URL:-https://wheels.aldryn.net/v1/aldryn-extras+pypi/${WHEELS_PLATFORM:-aldryn-baseproject-py3}/+simple/} \
    WHEELSPROXY_URL=${WHEELSPROXY_URL:-https://wheels.aldryn.net/v1/aldryn-extras+pypi/${WHEELS_PLATFORM:-aldryn-baseproject-py3}/}
COPY requirements.* /app/
COPY addons-dev /app/addons-dev/
RUN pip-reqs compile && \
    pip-reqs resolve && \
    pip install \
        --no-index --no-deps \
        --requirement requirements.urls
# </PYTHON>

If requirements.txt is present in the project, then the pip-reqs compile instruction will be removed. See How to pin all of your project’s Python dependencies for why you might want to do this.

The <SOURCE> section

The SOURCE section copies the project files to the /app directory of the container.

# <SOURCE>
COPY . /app
# </SOURCE>

We do this late in our Dockerfile by default. This is because it copies the entire repository into the container, meaning that if anything is changed in the repository, it would invalidate all the following layers, which would have to be rebuilt from scratch rather than using cached layers. For reasons of economy, we keep this as late as possible.

If other parts of the repository need to be copied into the container earlier in the process, these should be explicitly specified as required.

The <GULP> section

If gulpfile.js is present in the root of the project, then instructions will be inserted to run the gulp build process:

# <GULP>
ENV GULP_MODE=production
RUN gulp build
# </GULP>

The <STATIC> section

<STATIC> is always populated, with a command to copy static files to the location from where the web server will serve them:

# <STATIC>
RUN DJANGO_MODE=build python manage.py collectstatic --noinput
# </STATIC>