Docker Compose Watch

One of my projects features a Dockerized API. The dev process was: write a file, rebuild container, and restart container. There’s a better way!

Add this to your docker-compose.yml (path and target directories will be unique to your project):

develop:
  watch:
    - path: ./
      target: /app/
      action: sync+restart

Then, start your container with --watch.

docker-compose up --watch api

Now, anytime I write a file, Docker quickly copies it into my target directory and restarts the container. This reduced iterations from over a minute to under ten seconds.

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