Pipelines - Move to next step after successfully running a container.

Question

Hi,

I am building a pipeline to build and distribute a dockerised application. I am able to get the container built and running but because it's essentially an open-ended container that runs and runs I need to ensure it is running and then stop the container and move to the next steps in the pipeline.

Is there any way to do this? The reason I want to ensure that it runs is I have experienced issues in the past where dependencies in parts of the Dockerfile stages were updated and caused the container to build but not run.

Currently, I have tried curl'ing the localhost but that doesn't get triggered. the container runs and as it's long-standing it therefore just stays on that command indefinitely.

obsydian · Answer

By runs I just need to check it doesn't error on running. I just need to check that the server is up and running and that could be done by checking the container log which shows the following.

[info] The server listening at port: 4000

Or by pinging the healthcheck endpoint. I'm not sure which is preferable or how I go about doing this as the next step in the pipeline. Any comments or leads welcome but thanks for your input already.

Erez Maadani · Answer

Hey @obsydian

It's possible and mainly depends on your definition of "successful run" of your image. Does "successful" mean that the container run for X seconds? or reached a certain point in the code? something else?

Basically, you would need to:

* Run your container in the background, using "-d" flag.
* Run "sleep" in your step to let your container reach the desired point.
* Check if the container reached the desired point. Depending on your need, it might be checking if the container is still running, checking the container's logs, etc'.
* Exit the step with a suitable exit code

Hope that helps