I am wanting to automate some homelab things. Specifically deploying new and updating existing docker containers.

I would like to publish my entire docker compose stacks (minus env vars) onto a public Git repo, and then using something to select a specific compose from that, on a specific branch (so I can have a physical seperate server for testing) automatically deploy a container.

I thought of Jenkins, as it is quite flexable, and I am very willing to code it together, but are there any tools like this that I should look into instead? I’ve heard Ansible is not ideal for docker compose.

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    I’m gonna be real: You want kubernetes + gitops (either fluxcd or argocd or the rancher one).

    I mean sure, jenkins works, but nothing is going to be as smooth as kubernetes. I originally attempted to use ansible as many people suggested, but I got frustrated becuase it struggled to manage state in a truly declarative way (e.g. when I would change the ports in the ansible files the podman containers wouldn’t update, I had to add tasks for destroying and recreating the containers).

    I eventually just switched to kubernetez + fluxcd. I push to the git repo. The state of the kubernetes cluster changes according. Beatiful. Simple. Encrypted secrets via sops. It supports the helm package manager as well. Complex af to set up though. But it’s a huge time saver in the long run, which is why so many companies use it.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    I’ve heard Ansible is not ideal for docker compose.

    Not sure what you heard, but I use ansible to push docker compose files to VMs and publish containers without issue. Works nicely.

    I usually create systemd service files to start/stop the compose jobs and have ansible set it all up.

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I don’t think it necessarily needs to be either or. Organizing the playbooks and folders myself can be stressful so an extra layer of organization might work best for you. There are other tools like Semaphore that are specifically built for Ansible executions though. Might need a lot of duct tape for Jenkins to run Ansible.

      And if you’re not a fan of yaml you can always nope out and embed shell scripts into your Playbooks. You can even put Docker compose yaml inside a playbook but it’s a bit inception-y and I don’t really recommend that.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    I did Jenkins for a while. It works, but it was built before the world of containers and is now fairly antiquated. Most extensions are no longer maintained.

    Look into forgejo, and then use actions to auto deploy

  • liliumstar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    I’ve used Ansible to deploy docker compose and it worked pretty well. You will have to do some learning if you aren’t familiar with it, but I’d say it’s worth it.

    Like others, I would not recommend Jenkins.

  • MummifiedClient5000English
    2·
    2 days ago

    I use Ansible to deploy a bunch of containers with intradependencies (shared volumes, networks and settings). One of the containers is homemade with the source pulled from codeberg. Variables are kept in a separate file and passwords in an encrypted one and the whole thing is in a private repo. It is quite flexible.

    When I started out converting from compose, I literally asked Copilot for “this, but in Ansible”, which got me pretty far.

  • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    2 days ago

    You wanna know a fun way to do this?

    GitHub (and I think Gitlab too) supports you running their runner within your own infra. It’s literally a binary that needs permissions and space. Then, you can tell your git repo to use that runner to run docker compose and as part of the “build” process, deploy you container to the same or an in-network machine.

    This is not secure, it’s probably going to involve a lot of hard coding of local IPs or server names etc. But you can make it work.

    I use this way to get a Win11 PC to run some regular containers on itself. Works like a charm.

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I did this and the fun thing about it is that your runner can access things inside your network that a regular GitLab runner can’t. I’ve used it to manage a k8s cluster that isn’t exposed to the Internet at all.