How do I mount a host directory as a volume in docker compose

Question

I have a development environment I\'m dockerizing and I would like the ability to livereload my changes without having to rebuild docker images. I\'m using docker compose be

Answer 1

There are a few options

Short Syntax

Using the host : guest format you can do any of the following:

volumes:
  # Just specify a path and let the Engine create a volume
  - /var/lib/mysql

  # Specify an absolute path mapping
  - /opt/data:/var/lib/mysql

  # Path on the host, relative to the Compose file
  - ./cache:/tmp/cache

  # User-relative path
  - ~/configs:/etc/configs/:ro

  # Named volume
  - datavolume:/var/lib/mysql

Long Syntax

As of docker-compose v3.2 you can use long syntax which allows the configuration of additional fields that can be expressed in the short form such as mount type (volume, bind or tmpfs) and read_only.

version: "3.2"
services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    volumes:
      - type: volume
        source: mydata
        target: /data
        volume:
          nocopy: true
      - type: bind
        source: ./static
        target: /opt/app/static

networks:
  webnet:

volumes:
  mydata:

Check out https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/#long-syntax-3 for more info.