Using Docker Commands with Aliases and Bash Functions
We use Docker at work and so I find myself running the same commands over and over. To save time I saved frequent docker
and docker-compose
commands as aliases and functions.
Aliases
These aliases save a few key strokes for running often used commands:
# general compose aliases
alias dcb="docker-compose build"
alias dcu="docker-compose up"
alias dcub="docker-compose up --build"
alias dcs="docker-compose stop"
# list all running containers
alias dps="docker ps"
# stop all running containers
alias dsa="docker ps -q | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -o docker stop"
# list dangling images
alias dlist="docker volume ls -qf dangling=true"
Functions
Some commands are better saved as functions.
When developing and writing unit tests, I will often want to get to the bash prompt in the test container. I saved this function as dcbash.sh
and aliased it as dcbash
to save a few keystrokes:
#!/bin/bash
# Run a bash shell in the specified container (with docker-compose)
# a simple help menu: if no arg is passed in, the function usage is printed
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
echo "Usage: $FUNCNAME CONTAINER_NAME"
return 1
fi
# this echo is optional but I like to maintain familiarity with the actual command
echo "CMD: docker-compose run --entrypoint="" $1 /bin/bash";
docker-compose run --entrypoint="" $1 /bin/bash
For example dcbash pretend-service-test
runs docker-compose run --entrypoint="" pretend-service-test /bin/bash
.
Images take up space and are not auto removed. I've encountered errors before about lack of space so a periodic tidy up of unused images and containers is recommended.
I saved this as drmi.sh
and it removes dangling Docker images:
#!/bin/bash
# remove docker dangling images
docker rmi $(docker images --filter "dangling=true" -q --no-trunc)
I saved this as drmc.sh
and it removes all non-running containers:
#!/bin/bash
# removes all non-running containers
docker rm $(docker ps -q -a);
These aliases and functions help my productivity by saving a key strokes and saving time looking up the commands for a periodic tidy up of Docker images and containers. I hope they may prove useful to you too.