cage 0.1.0

Develop multi-pod docker-compose apps
Documentation

Cage: Develop and deploy complex Docker applications

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Does your project have too many Docker services? Too many git repos? Cage makes it easy to develop complex, multi-service applications locally. It works with standard docker-compose.yml files and docker-compose, but it helps bring order to the complexity:

  • Cage provides a standardized project structure, much like Rails did for web development.
  • Cage allows you to work with multiple source repositories, and to mix pre-built Docker images with local source code.
  • Cage removes the repetitive clutter from your docker-compose.yml files.
  • Cage provides secret management, either using a single text file or Hashicorp's Vault.

Installation

First, you need to install Docker and make sure that you have at least version 1.8.1 of docker-compose:

$ docker-compose --version
docker-compose version 1.8.1, build 878cff1

We provide pre-built cage binaries for Linux and MacOS on the release page. The Linux binaries are statically linked and should work on any modern Linux distribution. To install, you can just unzip the binaries and copy them to /usr/local/bin:

unzip cage-*.zip
sudo cp cage /usr/local/bin/
rm cage-*.zip cage

If you would like to install from source, we recommend using rustup and cargo install:

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
cargo install cage

If you have trouble using cage's vault integration, try installing with cargo instead.

Trying it out

Create a new application using cage, and list the associated Git repositories:

$ cage new myapp
$ cd myapp
$ cage source ls
rails_hello               https://github.com/faradayio/rails_hello.git

Pull the pre-built Docker images associated with this application:

$ cage pull

Trying checking out the source code for an image locally:

$ cage source clone rails_hello
$ cage source ls
rails_hello               https://github.com/faradayio/rails_hello.git
  Cloned at src/rails_hello

Start up your application:

$ cage up
Starting myapp_db_1
Starting myapp_web_1

You'll notice that the src/rails_hello directory is mounted at /usr/src/app inside the myapp_web_1 pod, so that you can make changes locally and test them.

Run a command inside the frontend pod's web container to create a database:

$ cage exec frontend/web rake db:create
Created database 'myapp_development'
Created database 'db/test.sqlite3'

We could also just specify the service name web instead of the full frontend/web, as long as web is unique across all pods.

We can also package up frequently-used commands in their own, standalone "task" pods, and run them on demand:

$ cage run migrate
Creating myapp_migrate_1
Attaching to myapp_migrate_1
myapp_migrate_1 exited with code 0

You should be able to access your application at http://localhost:3000/.

You may also notice that since myapp_migrate_1 is based on the same underlying Git repository as myapp_web_1, that it also has a mount of src/rails_hello in the appropriate location. If you change the source on your host system, it will automatically show up in both containers.

We can run container-specific unit tests, which are specified by the container, so that you can invoke any unit test framework of your choice:

$ cage test web

And we can access individual containers using a configurable shell:

$ cage shell web
root@21bbbb41ad4a:/usr/src/app#

The top-level convenience commands like test and shell make it much easier to perform standard development tasks without knowing how individual containers work.

For more information, check out cage's help:

cage --help

What's a pod?

A "pod" is a tightly-linked group of containers that are always deployed together. Kubernetes defines pods as:

A pod (as in a pod of whales or pea pod) is a group of one or more containers (such as Docker containers), the shared storage for those containers, and options about how to run the containers. Pods are always co-located and co-scheduled, and run in a shared context. A pod models an application-specific “logical host” - it contains one or more application containers which are relatively tightly coupled — in a pre-container world, they would have executed on the same physical or virtual machine.

If you're using Amazon's ECS, a pod corresponds to an ECS "task" or "service". If you're using Docker Swarm, a pod corresponds to a single docker-compose.xml file full of services that you always launch as a single unit.

Pods typically talk to other pods using ordinary DNS lookups or service discovery. If a pod accepts outside network connections, it will often do so via a load balancer.

Project format

See examples/hello for a complete example.

hello
└── pods
    ├── common.env
    ├── frontend.yml
    └── targets
        ├── development
        │   └── common.env
        ├── production
        │   ├── common.env
        │   └── frontend.yml
        └── test
            └── common.env

Reporting issues

If you encounter an issue, it might help to set the following shell variables and re-run the command:

export RUST_BACKTRACE=1 RUST_LOG=cage=debug,compose_yml=debug

Development notes

Pull requests are welcome! If you're unsure about your idea, then please feel free to file an issue and ask us for feedback. We like suggestions!

Setting up tools

When working on this code, we recommend installing the following support tools:

cargo install rustfmt
cargo install cargo-watch

We also recommend installing nightly Rust, which produces better error messages and supports extra warnings using Clippy:

rustup update nightly
rustup override set nightly

If nightly produces build errors, you may need to update your compiler and libraries to the latest versions:

rustup update nightly
cargo update

If that still doesn't work, try using stable Rust instead:

rustup override set stable

If you're using nightly, run the following in a terminal as you edit:

cargo watch "test --no-default-features --features unstable --color=always" \
    "build --no-default-features --features unstable --color=always"

If you're using stable, leave out --no-default-features --features unstable:

cargo watch "test --color=always" "build --color=always"

Before committing your code, run:

cargo fmt

This will automatically reformat your code according to the project's conventions. We use Travis CI to verify that cargo fmt has been run and that the project builds with no warnings. If it fails, no worries—just go ahead and fix your pull request, or ask us for help.

Official releases

To make an official release, you need to be a maintainer, and you need to have cargo publish permissions. If this is the case, first edit Cargo.toml to bump the version number, then regenerate Cargo.lock using:

cargo build

Commit the release, using a commit message of the format:

v<VERSION>: <SUMMARY>

<RELEASE NOTES>

Then run:

cargo publish
git tag v$VERSION
git push; git push --tags

This will rebuild the official binaries using Travis CI, and upload a new version of the crate to crates.io.