Re-Docker is a very simple tool to enable restarting a running docker container with a new image. There are other tools that will do this but most of them require slightly more setup.
To use redocker add it to your path and when you start a command that you will want to update later use redocker run instead of docker run. Later run redocker checkup to check if there's a new docker image available and if so pull it, kill the running container and start fresh using the same run command from when it was first started. That's it!
There are 4 commands supported by redocker. Any commands not listed here are forwarded to the docker command.
- run -- Same as 'docker run' but stores everything needed to restart the container from a new image
- checkup -- Checks all containers for an updated image and if one is available pulls it and re-runs the container from that.
- list -- Lists all containers managed by redocker
- forget -- remove 'name' from redocker's memory
- pip install docker
- add redocker to your path
Q: Will files stored in the container filesystem be preserved?
A: No. The the running container will be deleted and a new one started with the same arguments.
Q: If I run redocker checkup will it restart my container if no new image is available?
A: Nope
Q: Can I 'checkup' a single container rather than all of them?
A: Yes. If you provide an argument to checkup it will be treated as a regular expression and matched against the container names
Q: Should I use this to manage my huge cluster of super important containers?
A: Probably not. You may want to look at docker compose or something.