Git Worktrees and Docker Compose

I've recently started trialling Git worktrees again as part of my development workflow.

If you are unfamiliar with Git worktrees, they allow you to have multiple branches of a repository checked out at the same time in different directories.

For example, this is what I see within my local checkout of my website repository:

.
├── config
├── HEAD
├── main
│   ├── ansible
│   ├── nginx
│   ├── README.md
│   └── website
├── new-post
│   ├── ansible
│   ├── nginx
│   ├── README.md
│   └── website
├── objects
│   ├── info
│   └── pack
├── packed-refs
├── refs
│   ├── heads
│   └── tags
└── worktrees
├── main
└── new-post

The first thing that you'll notice is, because it's a bare clone, it looks a little different to a what you usually see in a Git repository.

Each worktree has it's own directory, so my "main" branch inside the main directory.

If I need to work on a different branch, such as new-post, then I can create a new worktree, move into that directory and start working. I don't need to commit or stash any in-progress work and switch branches.

Complications with Docker Compose

I use Docker and Docker Compose for my projects, and this caused some issues for me the last time that I tried using worktrees.

By default, Docker Compose will use the name of the directory that the Compose file is in to name its containers. If the directory name is "oliverdavies-uk", then the containers will be oliverdavies-uk-web_1, oliverdavies-uk-db_1 etc.

This doesn't work so well if the directory is a worktree called "main" or "master" as you'll have containers called main_web_1 or master_db_1.

The way to solve this is to use the COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME environment variable.

If you prefix Docker Compose commands with COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=your-project, or add it to an .env file (Docker Compose will load this automatically), then this will override the prefix in the container names to be your-project-{service}.

Container names per worktree

Whilst you could use the same Compose project name within all of your worktrees, I prefer to include the worktree name as a suffix - something like my-project-main or my-project-staging - and keep these stored in an .env file in each worktree's directory.

As each worktree now has unique container names, I can have multiple instances of a project running at the same time, and each worktree will have it's own separate data - meaning that I can make changes and test something in one worktree without affecting any others.

You can also use the COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME variable inside Docker Compose files.

For example, if you use Traefik and needed to override the host URL for a service, the string will be interpolated and the project name would be injected as you'd expect.

labels:
- "traefik.http.routers.${COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME}.rule=Host(
`${COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME}.docker.localhost`,
`admin.${COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME}.docker.localhost`
)"

This means that Traefik would continue to use a different URL for each worktree without you needing to make any changes to your Docker Compose file.