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.

  • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    3 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.