docker-rerun

docker-rerun is a small utility script that makes it easy to re-run docker containers using the same arguments you used previously.

Want to update to a newer image, or add a missing port publication? docker-rerun’s got you covered.

Installation

You can install the current stable version of docker-rerun using pip:

$ pip install --upgrade docker-rerun

Or the bleeding edge version from git:

$ pip install --upgrade git+https://github.com/csmith/docker-rerun.git

Note that docker-rerun requires Python 3, so you may need to use pip3 in place of pip depending on your system configuration.

Usage

In the most basic usage, you pass in a container name and it will be stopped, deleted and recreated:

$ docker-rerun apache

You can also pass additional arguments to modify aspects of the container when it’s rerun. For example, to change the image:

$ docker-rerun --image nginx:latest webserver

To check what exactly is going to be performed beforehand, use the --dry-run option:

$ docker-rerun --dry-run apache
docker stop apache
docker rm apache
docker run --name=apache -p=80:80/tcp --restart=always apache:latest

Demo

What’s supported

At present docker-rerun supports copying a number of commonly used arguments:

• Commands (trailing arguments)
• Environment variables (-e/--env)
• Labels (-l/--label)
• Links (--link)
• Names (--name)
• Networks (--network)
• Port publications (-p)
• Restart policies (--restart)
• User switching (-u/--user)
• Volumes (-v/--volume, and --volumes-from)

If a container uses an argument that’s not supported yet, it will be silently dropped when rerunning.

Arguments

The built-in help shows all available arguments. --dry-run and --pull affect the behaviour of docker-rerun; other options allow modification of the container’s parameters.

usage: docker-rerun [-h] [-d] [--pull] [--image IMAGE] [--label LABEL]
                    [--network NETWORK] [--port PORT] [--tag TAG]
                    container

Reruns docker containers with different parameters.

positional arguments:
  container             The container to rerun

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d, --dry-run         Don't actually re-run the container, just print what
                        would happen.
  --pull                Docker pull the image before re-running the container
  --image IMAGE         Image to use in place of the original
  --label LABEL, -l LABEL
                        The new label to add to the container.
  --network NETWORK     The new network configuration to use
  --port PORT, -p PORT  Additional port to expose
  --tag TAG             Image tag (version) to use

What’s not done yet

Many other command line arguments:

• Network aliases
• Permissions and policies
• Advanced networking options

More options to allow mutating the container config when rerunning.