README.md

Developing using Docker

Since Discourse runs in Docker, why not develop there? If you have Docker installed, you should be able to run Discourse directly from your source directory using a Discourse development container.

Step-by-step

It should be as easy as (from your source root):

./bin/docker/boot_dev --init
    # wait while:
    #   - dependencies are installed,
    #   - the database is migrated, and
    #   - an admin user is created (you'll need to interact with this)

./bin/docker/rails s

... then open a browser on http://localhost:3000 and voila!, you should see Discourse.

When you're done, you can kill the Docker container with:

./bin/docker/shutdown_dev

Note that data is persisted between invocations of the container in your source root tmp/postgres directory.

If for any reason you want to reset your database run

sudo rm -fr tmp/postgres

Other Notes

Where is the container image/Dockerfile defined?

The Dockerfile comes from discourse/discourse_docker on GitHub, in particular image/discourse_dev.