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Comment by ansible | Hacker News Reader

I do something sort of similar, also using git to maintain the inventory of what to run on what machine.

In my case, I'm using docker-compose.yml files for each machine, and then running:

  docker-compose pull
  docker-compose up -d

We initially wanted to use Watchtower, but it didn't work well for us.

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Try docker contexts: https://www.docker.com/blog/how-to-deploy-on-remote-docker-h...

This is a great feature, introduced in Feb this year. It addressees a substantial pain point with docker-compose.

Thanks for pointing this out.

Indeed this does look very useful.

I had a quick glance over this, but for contexts which are defined as remote ssh hosts, I couldn't see where the images are obtained. Are they being built remotely on the host, or are they being downloaded from your local machine over a tunnel or via a docker registry?

Nitpicking: Why pull separately? it will pull if no image stored locally or even if the `docker-compose.yml` changed.

Stale images can be a reason. If I specify `image: foo:latest`, then push new versions, it won't automatically pull new versions unless you do an explicit pull.

Two reasons I've done this in my own Makefiles: predictable start times, and separation of failure-prone steps.

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