remove container_name?

[wardi]

For discussion: Removing the container_name lines lets us run many ckan-docker sites at the same time (assuming you use different ports)

What is the benefit in forcing a container name in the docker compose config?

[kowh-ai]

The CKAN Docker install has always had container_name: in the compose file. Previously to the current implementation the names were hard coded. Now they are variables referenced from the .env file. I guess it’s done for container name consistency ie: referencing a container from within the container network, perhaps for monitoring, although we don’t offer that…Would you want to build/run the same container under different service names within the same compose file?

[wardi]

my use case is cloning this repo into different directories for different versions of ckan, test environments and work on different extensions. With container_name set this way I either need to customize all the container names in every .env file or I can only run one docker compose environment at a time on my machine.

My fix has been to comment out the container_name lines and let docker compose automatically assign them names based on the directory name plus an index.

[kowh-ai]

@wardi - Do you have to update the .env file at all after cloning to a new directory? If so, why not add another environment variable to .env, say ENV and set this to the environment name ie: dev3 and then use a docker-compose.yml file that has modifed the container_name: to be like the following:
...
nginx:
container_name: ${ENV}-${NGINX_CONTAINER_NAME}
build:
...

You would need to make one change to the .env file per new environment

[wardi]

My point is that if you don't have container name set in the yaml file then docker compose does this automatically based on the directory name (it even adds a suffix to avoid conflicts IIUC)

Unless there's something I'm missing removing these names would be less effort, more standard and more flexible than adding a new .env setting.

[kowh-ai]

@wardi - OK, sure I'll merge this...thanks.

I'll update the README to mention adding container_name: to the compose yaml files if there is a requirement for consistent container names for whatever reason. I'll also remove the *_CONTAINER_NAMES from the .env.example file and make similar changes to the docker-compose.dev.yml file in a separate PR for consistency

[wardi]

@kowh-ai thanks, I think you can update this PR if you prefer because it's part of this repo