Suppose I wrote a docker-compose.dev.yml file to set the development environment of a Flask project (web application) using Docker. In docker-compose.dev.yml I have set up two services, one for the database and one to run the Flask application in debug mode (which allows me to do hot changes without having to recreate/restart the containers). This allows everyone on the development team to use the same development environment very easily. However, there is a problem: it is evident that while developing an application it is necessary to install libraries, as well as to list them in the requirements.txt file (in the case of Python). For this I only see two alternatives using a Docker development environment:

1. Enter the console of the container where the Flask application is running and use the pip install ... and pip freeze > requirements.txt commands.
2. Manually write the dependencies to the requirements.txt file and rebuild the containers.

The first option is a bit laborious, while the second is a bit "dirty". Is there any more suitable option than the two mentioned alternatives?

Edit: I don't know if I'm asking something that doesn't make sense, but I'd appreciate if someone could give me some guidance on what I'm trying to accomplish.

CodePudding user response：

The second option is generally used in python environments. You just add new packages to requirements.txt and restart the container, which has a line with pip install -r requirements.txt in its dockerfile that do the installing.

CodePudding user response：

If the goal is to have a consistent dev environment, the safest way I can think of would be to build a base image with the updated dependencies and publish to a private registry so that you can refer to a specific tag like app:v1.2. So the Dockerfile can look like:

FROM AppBase:v1.2
...

This means that there is no need to install the dependencies and results in a quicker and consistent dev env setup.