Force update shared volume in docker compose - docker

Question

my docker file for ui image is as follows
FROM node:alpine as prodnode
WORKDIR /app
COPY ./package.json ./
RUN npm i
COPY . .
CMD ["npm", "run", "build"]
and my docker compose looks like below.
version: "3"
services:
nginx:
depends_on:
- backend
- ui
restart: always
volumes:
- ./nginx/prod.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
- static:/usr/share/nginx/html
build:
context: ./nginx/
dockerfile: Dockerfile
ports:
- "80:80"
backend:
build:
context: ./backend/
dockerfile: Dockerfile
volumes:
- /app/node_modules
- ./backend:/app
environment:
- PGUSER=postgres
- PGHOST=postgres
- PGDATABASE=postgres
- PGPASSWORD=postgres_password
- PGPORT=5432
ui:
tty: true
stdin_open: true
environment:
- CHOKIDAR_USEPOLLING=true
build:
context: ./ui/
dockerfile: Dockerfile
volumes:
- /app/node_modules
- ./ui:/app
- static:/app/build
postgres:
image: "postgres:latest"
environment:
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres_password
volumes:
static:
I am trying to build static content and copy the content between ui container to nginx container.I use shared volume.Everything works fine as expected.But when I change contents of ui and build again, changes are not reflecting.I tried following thing.
docker-compose down
docker-compose up --build
docker-compose up
None of them is replacing the static content with the new build.
Only when i remove the static volume like below
docker volume rm skeleton_static
and then do
docker-compose up --build
It is changing the content now.. How do i automatically replace the static contents on every docker-compose up or docker-compose up --build thanks.

Answer 1

Named volumes are presumed to hold user data in some format Docker can't understand; Docker never updates their content after they're originally created, and if you mount a volume over image content, the old content in the volume hides updated content in the image. As such, I'd avoid named volumes here.
It looks like in the setup you show, the ui container doesn't actually do anything: its main container process is to build the application, and then it exits immediately. A multi-stage build is a more appropriate approach here, and it will let you compile the application during the image build phase without declaring a do-nothing container or adding the complexity of named volumes.
# ui/Dockerfile
# First stage: build the application; note this is
# very similar to the existing Dockerfile
FROM node:alpine as prodnode
WORKDIR /app
COPY ./package.json ./
RUN npm i
COPY . .
RUN ["npm", "run", "build"] # not CMD
# Second stage: nginx server serving that application
FROM nginx:latest
COPY --from=prodnode /app/build /usr/share/nginx/html
# use default CMD from the base image
In your docker-compose.yml file, you don't need separate "build" and "serve" containers, these are now combined together.
version: "3.8"
services:
backend:
build: ./backend
environment:
- PGUSER=postgres
- PGHOST=postgres
- PGDATABASE=postgres
- PGPASSWORD=postgres_password
- PGPORT=5432
depends_on:
- postgres
# no volumes:
ui:
build: ./ui
depends_on:
- backend
ports:
- '80:80'
# no volumes:
postgres:
image: "postgres:latest"
environment:
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres_password
volumes: # do persist database data
- pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data
volumes:
pgdata:
A similar problem will apply to the anonymous volume you've used for the backend service's node_modules directory, and it will ignore any changes to the package.json file. Since all of the application's code and library dependencies are already included in the image, I've deleted the volumes: block that would overwrite those.