Docker Development

Dependencies

Debian-based distro:

sudo apt install git docker-compose
sudo systemctl start docker
git clone https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy --recursive

Arch-based distro:

sudo pacman -S git docker-compose
sudo systemctl start docker

Get the code with submodules:

git clone https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy --recursive

Building

Use these commands to create a custom container based on your local branch and tagged accordingly.

This is useful if you want to modify the source code of your instance to add some extra functionalities which are not available in the main release.

sudo docker build . -f docker/Dockerfile --build-arg RUST_RELEASE_MODE=release -t "lemmy:${git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD}"

Build Troubleshooting

In case the build fails, the following might help resolve it

Translations missing

If you see an error like this

Error: FileRead { file: "translations/email/en.json", source: Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" } }

Try these commands

git submodule init && git submodule update

Then try building again

Running custom build on your server

If you want a custom docker build to run on your instance via docker, you don't need to upload to a container repository, you can upload directly from your PC through ssh.

The following commands will copy the file to your instance and then load it onto your server's container registry

LEMMY_SRV=lemmy.example.com # Add the FQDN, IP or hostname of your lemmy server here
# We store in /tmp to avoid putting it in our local branch and committing it by mistake
sudo docker save -o /tmp/customlemmy.tar lemmy:${git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD}
# We change permissios to allow our normal user to read the file as root might not have ssh keys
sudo chown ${whoami} /tmp/${git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD}
scp /tmp/customlemmy.tar ${LEMMY_SRV}:
ssh ${LEMMY_SRV}
# This command should be run while in your lemmy server as the user you uploaded
sudo docker load -i ${HOME}/customlemmy.tar

After the container is in your registry, simply change the docker-compose to have your own tag in the image key

image: lemmy:your_branch_name

Finally, reinitiate the container

docker-compose up -d

You should now be running your custom docker container.

Running

cd docker
./docker_update.sh

Then open localhost:1236 in your browser.

Building with Docker is relatively slow. To get faster builds you need to use local development instead.

Federation Development

The federation setup allows starting a few local Lemmy instances, to test federation functionality. You can start it with the following commands:

cd docker/federation
./start-local-instances.bash

The federation test sets up 5 instances:

You can log into each using the instance name, and lemmylemmy as the password, IE (lemmy_alpha, lemmylemmy).

To start federation between instances, visit one of them and search for a user, community or post, like this. Note that the Lemmy backend runs on a different port than the frontend, so you have to increment the port number from the URL bar by one.

• http://lemmy-gamma:8561/u/lemmy-gamma
• http://lemmy-alpha:8541/c/main
• http://lemmy-beta:8551/post/3