Testcontainers-java: Use of links between containers should be deprecated

[rnorth]

As discussed in #463, docker networks seem mature enough to use, and links are officially not recommended any more.

We'd like to deprecate use of links; off the top of my head I believe we ought to do the following things:

• [x] Obviously, mark the container addLink method as deprecated with a clear comment
• [x] Links aren't currently documented very well, but update the docs with a clear enough description of the networking support, so that ad-hoc linking can be done easily by users
• [x] Modify Webdriver VNC recorder sidecar container to remove use of links
• [x] Modify Docker Compose support; can we remove use of the ambassador container now?

[kiview]

I'm really looking forward to removing the ambassador container, I believe this will make things a lot easier in more complex CI environments.

[kiview]

AFAIK the only thing missing now is the documentation update?

[felixbarny]

I'd very much appreciate some docs around networks :)

[kiview]

@felixbarny Yep you are right, PR appreciated :smile_cat:

[bsideup]

@felixbarny yes, the docs are missing and I feel sorry about it (since I was the one who implemented the networks support)
However, it is as simple as .withNetwork(networkInstance) and until it is implemented you an check existing usages in tests, i.e. Kafka:
https://github.com/testcontainers/testcontainers-java/blob/b5181f784c63b91a61ec68cd58acc522ce4d2dbc/modules/kafka/src/test/java/org/testcontainers/containers/KafkaContainerTest.java#L52-L69

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. If you believe this is a mistake, please reply to this comment to keep it open. If there isn't one already, a PR to fix or at least reproduce the problem in a test case will always help us get back on track to tackle this.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically closed due to inactivity. We apologise if this is still an active problem for you, and would ask you to re-open the issue if this is the case.

[rnorth]

Reopening - docs still needed

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. If you believe this is a mistake, please reply to this comment to keep it open. If there isn't one already, a PR to fix or at least reproduce the problem in a test case will always help us get back on track to tackle this.

[bsideup]

@rnorth given https://www.testcontainers.org/features/networking/#advanced-networking, should we close the issue now? :)