global_docker_compose

global_docker_compose is a centralized way to manage your external dependencies across multiple projects. You start up your Docker services once, and all relevant ports are exposed so that you can use them in your apps. You don't need special docker-compose.yml files in each app, nor do you have multiple versions of MySQL or Kafka running around.

The idea behind global_docker_compose is to have everything but your app running in a Docker container. global_docker_compose is the central place to manage making those containers "good", including volumes, correct port exposure, hostnames, etc.

This tool is specifically to be used for local development, not for integration testing on CI or production.

Installing

If you're running MacOS, you can install global_docker_compose via homebrew:

brew install wishabi/flipp/global_docker_compose

Alternatively, you can download executables from the Releases page, unzip it and put it somewhere in your PATH variable.

Or you can build it from source by running the following from the root directory of this repo:

go build -o global_docker_compose cmd/gdc/main.go

Usage

global_docker_compose has multiple sub-commands, most of which should be familiar:

• global_docker_compose up --service=<service1>,<service2>: Bring up a list of services as defined by the table below.
• global_docker_compose down {service}: Bring down the specified service, or all services if not provided.
• global_docker_compose down: Bring down all services.
• global_docker_compose stop --service=<service1>,<service2>: Stop the specified services, or all services if not provided.
• global_docker_compose stop: Stop all services.
• global_docker_compose ps: Show all running services that were configured using the tool.
• global_docker_compose config: Print out the docker compose config file being used.
• global_docker_compose logs {service}: Print out logs for the specified service, or all services if not provided.
• global_docker_compose exec <service> <command> Execute a command on an existing service.
• global_docker_compose mysql --service=<service> {input_file} Start a MySQL client against whatever MySQL service is provided (e.g. mysql56). If an input file is provided, execute the statements in the input file. Additional services can be specified in the <service> parameter; they will be ignored.
• global_docker_compose redis_cli Start the Redis CLI (assuming redis is running)
• global_docker_compose build {service} Build the target service image
• global_docker_compose build --no-cache {service} Build the target service image without caching build steps

The recommended usage of this command is via a shell script that lives in your project which automatically passes through the services that the app cares about. For example, in an executable file called gdc:

global_docker_compose "$@" --services=mysql57,redis,kafka

When you call e.g. gdc up it will automatically pass everything through to the global_docker_compose command which will correspond to global_docker_compose up --services=mysql57,redis,kafka. All commands will understand this option and use it to tailor the subcommands to the project settings. This allows your dev setup to be both simple and consistent: in all projects you use the same commands, gdc up, gdc down, gdc mysql etc. without having to worry about which versions or dependencies are installed.

Note that it's recommended to have the current directory in your PATH so you don't have to keep typing ./gdc. In your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc add:

EXPORT PATH=.:$PATH

Important Note

All services are exposed with the host IP of 127.0.0.1. If you use localhost, it may not work. Whenever accessing local services (e.g. in configuration for your app), you should always use the IP address, not localhost.

Additional Compose Files

global_docker_compose allows to supply an additional docker-compose file to augment the built-in ones with the --compose_file option. This file will be merged with the built-in ones using docker-compose's merging rules.

Note that if you define new services with this file, you must pass in the service name with the --services option along with the other ones.

As an example, if you have a separate docker-compose file that looks like this:

version: '3.6'
services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:11.1
    expose:
      - 5432
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: root

...you can start up Redis and Postgres with the following command:

global_docker_compose up --services=redis,postgres --compose_file=./docker-compose.yml

Supported Services

Key	Service	Ports
mysql57	MySQL 5.7	3307
mysql8	MySQL 8.0	3306
redis	Redis	6379 5540 (Insights V2)
kafka	Kafka with Confluent Platform	9092 (Kafka broker) 8081 (Schema Registry) 9021 (Control Center)
mailcatcher	Mailcatcher	1025 (SMTP server) 1080 (UI)
dynamodb	DynamoDB	8000 8099 (Admin Dashboard)
opensearch	OpenSearch	9200 5601 (Dashboard)

MySQL

global_docker_compose supports MySQL 5.7 and 8.0. To avoid port conflicts, the exported ports are as follows:

• 5.7: 3307
• 5.8: 3306

Exporting and Importing databases to GDC

To get a dump ready from your local databases to GDC, you must:

1. First set up permissions on your users for localhost by going into your local mysql server as the root user mysql -u root

-- Grant these perms for all users
> GRANT SHOW VIEW, SELECT, LOCK TABLES ON *.* TO ''@'localhost';
-- Or just grant them for a specific user (like fadmin)
> GRANT SHOW VIEW, SELECT, LOCK TABLES ON *.* TO 'fadmin'@'localhost';

2. Then actually dump the databases or selected databases with the --databases option

mysqldump --single-transaction -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 --all-databases --no-tablespaces -u root > ./dump.sql
# In a space-separated list, list it after `--databases` flag, e,g. fadmin dbs
mysqldump --single-transaction -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 --databases my_service_development my_service_test --no-tablespaces -u root > ./dump.sql

3. Now import the dump through gdc. If your app is already on gdc, the mysql command will default to the version of MySQL that it currently uses. Otherwise, you can specify the selected databases in Step 2. and MySQL version using global_docker_compose mysql --service=<service> <dump_file>

./gdc mysql ./dump.sql

4. Rinse and repeat! Don't forget to remove the dump-file to reduce clutter on your local machine.

rm ./dump.sql

Redis

Redis comes with a built-in redisinsight task which can show you the contents of your Redis installation. You can access Insights v2 at http://localhost:5540.

To allow it to access your local Redis, you can't use 127.0.0.1. Instead use docker networking and set it by the container name in the default case this will be redis.

Mailcatcher

Mailcatcher is a local SMTP server you can use to send and view e-mails. Set up your mail sending code to talk to port 1025 and you can view the mail that got sent on port 1080.

On Rails, this would look like:

  config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp
  config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = { address: '127.0.0.1', port: 1025 }

Releasing

Releases are done via GoReleaser which is run on GitHub Actions whenever a new tag is pushed. See the file .goreleaser.yml for more information.

To bump a new version, add a Git tag and also update the version reported in cmd/gdc/commands/root.go.

Contributing

Feel free to fork and add pull requests - we can add more services as necessary or tweak the ones we have.

You can build the executable locally by running:

go build -o global_docker_compose cmd/gdc/main.go

Adding a new service

The steps to add a new service are:

1. Add the service to gdc/docker-compose.yml.
2. Add the functionality for your command in gdc/docker.go.
3. Add a new command under cmd/gdc/commands. You can copy and paste an existing one or make changes. global_docker_compose uses Cobra for command-line flags, validations, help text and arguments, so please read that documentation for more info.
4. Put up your PR!

Troubleshooting

If you are on an M* macOS machine, you might run into trouble getting GDC to run.

Error: no matching manifest for linux/arm64/v8 in the manifest list entries

We had to apply these fixes:

docker pull --platform linux/x86_64 mysql
export DOCKER_DEFAULT_PLATFORM=linux/x86_64/v8 # you might want to put this in your rc or profile file

Then re-run gdc up.

References

StackOverflow Ref Use Colima to run Docker containers

Error: unknown shorthand flag: 'p' in -p

References

To fix this, we had to run:

ln -sfn $(brew --prefix)/opt/docker-compose/bin/docker-compose ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose

We also made sure colima, docker, docker-compose and XCode were all up to date.

Fadmin Troubleshooting docs