Build with multiple docker images

Waypoint
1

Hi,

I have a nomad job that has 2 tasks within a task group and each task has a custom image. Can someone advise how I’d go about building both images in the build stage? Or how to skip build so I can just build the 2 images in my CI pipeline as I do currently.

thanks!

2

Hey @robertg - If you’re building your containers else where, we recommend using the docker-pull plugin for your build stanzas instead. Also, if you are deploying multiple apps, you can use multiple app stanzas for separate builds.

3

Hi Brian,

We aren’t deploying multiple apps, simply 1 app with multiple parts that make up a single service. Examples of these may be php-fpm & apache, node & varnish or even our CRM & some related crons. These are all represented in our nomad jobs as either multiple tasks in a single group or as multiple groups but always in a single job that registers a single service with Consul (so not multiple apps).

I assume from your reply that currently the best approach would be to build the docker images separately. Can I also assume that it won’t be possible to use the ‘docker-pull’ step on both images and so, effectively, it would just be used as a “null” operation (because the build stage is not optional)?

May I request support in future for multiple ‘use’ statements or something in the build phase so I can use waypoint to build multiple images?

4

Waypoint has a view where 1 app means 1 build artifact. You. could do a build/deploy today with multiple app stanzas in a waypoint.hcl. Waypoint could build and deploy these containers at once this way.

project = "php-fpm-and-apache"

app "php-fpm" {
  build { ... }
  deploy { ... }
}

app "apache" {
  build { ... }
  deploy { ... }
}
5

Hmm, ok, I see how your suggestion would work. But I assume each deploy would then need it’s own nomad job and there would be no relation between the now separate jobs - so if one of the jobs failed the other would not also be rolled back like the tasks within task groups would be. I can see that wouldn’t matter in some cases - such as with one of the tasks being a varnish cache - but in other cases such as with apache and php where there is actually project code in both images (php in one, static assets in the other) it could cause a complete mess.

I think for now I’ll use docker-pull in the build step and basically treat it as a ‘no-op’ and then just use the nomad jobfile deploy in a single app.

But it would be great if support for multiple image builds within an ‘app’ were considered for the future, esp. given the planned deprecation of the one-project-multiple-apps concept in favour of one-repo-one-app :slight_smile: