zulip/docs/install-docker-dev.md

Using Docker (experimental)

Start by cloning this repository: git clone https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git

The docker instructions for development are experimental, so they may have bugs. If you try them and run into any issues, please report them!

You can also use Docker to run a Zulip development environment. First, you need to install Docker in your development machine following the instructions. Some other interesting links for somebody new in Docker are:

• Get Started
• Understand the architecture
• Docker run reference
• Dockerfile reference

Then you should create the Docker image based on Ubuntu Linux, first go to the directory with the Zulip source code:

docker build -t user/zulipdev .

Commit and tag the provisioned images. The below will install Zulip's dependencies:

docker ps -af ancestor=user/zulipdev
docker commit -m "Zulip installed" <container id> user/zulipdev:v2

Now you can run the docker server with:

docker run -itv $(pwd):/srv/zulip -p 9991:9991 user/zulipdev:v2 \
    /srv/zulip/tools/start-dockers

You'll want to read the guide for Zulip development to understand how to use the Zulip development. Note that start-dockers automatically runs tools/run-dev.py inside the container; you can then visit http://localhost:9991 to connect to your new Zulip Docker container.

To view the container's run-dev.py console logs to get important debugging information (and e.g. outgoing emails) printed by the Zulip development environment, you can use:

docker logs --follow <container id>

To restart the server use:

docker ps
docker restart <container id>

To stop the server use:

docker ps
docker kill <container id>

If you want to connect to the Docker instance to run commands (e.g. build a release tarball), you can use:

docker ps
docker exec -it <container id> /bin/bash
$ source /home/zulip/.bash_profile
$ <Your commands>
$ exit

If you want to run all the tests you need to start the servers first, you can do it with:

docker run -itv $(pwd):/srv/zulip user/zulipdev:v2 /bin/bash
$ tools/test-all-docker

You can modify the source code in your development machine and review the results in your browser.

Currently, the Docker workflow is substantially less convenient than the Vagrant workflow and less documented; please contribute to this guide and the Docker tooling if you are using Docker to develop Zulip!