Caprover: Feature Request: CDD Pre-Deploy Script

[dkimot]

I am using CDD to deploy a few node.js apps and am dealing with converting my Dockerfile to a captain-definition file. Because I have native Node.js modules in my app I have to use a custom Dockerfile. I've written a script to generate a captain-definition file from my custom Dockerfile but it would be awesome if I could automate running that script as a pre-deploy script. Maybe as an attribute in the captain-definition file.

Thoughts?

[githubsaturn]

There is an online tool which converts your Dockerfile to captain definition file:
https://githubsaturn.github.io/dockerfile-to-captain/

As for pre-deploy script, this is the purpose of Dockerfile.

• If you want your script to run as a build step, simply add it to Dockerfile as a RUN command
• If you want your script to run whenever your application restarts, add it as a CMD command.

I hope this answers your question. If there is a case that is not covered by the two cases I mentioned above, please let me know.

[dkimot]

Because the script converts a Dockerfile into a captain-definition file I can't run the script inside of the Dockerfile but I still want to automate the process. The script is more or less a Node.js version of the online tool. It would be nice to automate the process so I don't have build bugs cause by me editing the Dockerfile and not running the script. If the script was some kind of pre-deploy hook to build a captain-definition on the fly I could edit the Dockerfile without worrying about the captain-definition file.

[githubsaturn]

I see. A couple of points here:
1) captain-definition is the definition of build steps. Logically it doesn't make sense that definition at runtime makes changes to its own content. It's like, having a Dockerfile step that changes Dockerfile. This will be possible, but will be a very broken behavior.
2) pre-deploy logics should always sit in Dockerfile/captain-definition as they "are" pre-deploy scripts.
3) Your specific use case totally makes sense. That's why I am planning on changing captain-definition such that it can read directly from Dockerfile. It will be something like:

{
     schemaVersion : 1
     dockerFile : "Dockerfile.release"  # or "Dockerfile" or etc...
}

[drmrbrewer]

Re 3... sounds a bit like my suggestion here: https://github.com/githubsaturn/captainduckduck/issues/113 ;-)

[githubsaturn]

Yup. It's exactly that. 👍
I think i need to change it to not copy things into src folder. Anyways that will require some thinking to make sure that we cover as many cases as possible.

[dkimot]

That clearly the better solution. Thanks!