Not sure how many people would directly seek out a website like this but if it shows up in google searches its probably useful. You could also probably also source compose files from github automatically (obviously with a disclaimer) to help quickly get examples for containers.
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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I'm not the host or author of this one, but I know it already covers what you are wanting to do. ;)
I run synology, so I usually refer to this guy's website first to compare projects https://mariushosting.com/docker/
Although, some guides he posts require an environment variables file, of which he requires a donation for before downloading. I just scour the internet for the original projects' compose at that point.
Have you looked at this?:
NFT site
Non-Fungible Tokens?
The website has one of those cringe nft monkeys, but otherwise the site looks good
You might want to take a look at https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/ . That's exactly what you want, but without Docker. It uses Proxmox / LXC / VMs and is really, really awesome for selfhosting.
RIP ttek
I'm really happy that the community stepped up and continued his great work.
It's not actually going that great, there is already infighting on the direction of the scripts.
that's really disappointing!
I'd assume the projects either have a docker-compose example in the readme or in the repository files alongside the actual project.
Is that so uncommon?
It's not that it's uncommon, but slightly different for each project.
I collated library would be kinda cool.
That said, I don't know how much utility this project would have.
It might be cool, but it seems like it would be missing the context and documentation that would be present in it's project repo.
If only there were some way you could kind of refer viewers to the primary documentation for the project.
Yeah, that's fair. Very convoluted and difficult documented.
I know of these:
https://github.com/bitnami/containers/tree/main/bitnami/
https://github.com/docker/awesome-compose
They're not specific to projects listed in the awesome-selfhosted list though.
While most have examples in their readme's on Docker hub and Github, not all of them do, so I sometimes have to hunt down an example buried in their git repo somewhere. So a searchable page for popular self-hosted app docker compose files would be welcome.
I don't think I've seen such a page anywhere else.
Why compose and not just containers?
Why would anyone use containers without compose?
Especially people who are newer? It’s far easier.
Compose doesn't have a versioned standard, it did for a bit iirc, which also means you can't always just grab a compose file and know it will always just work.
Most self hosted works fine with giant all in one containers, even for complex apps, it's when you need to scale you usually hit problems with an all in one container approach and have to change.
Huh? They officially support it and there is no need for a version any more. It's standardised. As a matter of fact, if you try to start a compose stack that starts with a version number it gives you a warning that it's not needed.
The lack of version is the problem. Syntax has changed over time, so when someone finds or has an older compose file, there is no hint it won't work with the current version of docker-compose until you get errors and no graceful way to handle it.
You answer my question with a question... But I'll answer it.
Compose is meant for multi-container applications or development. It's good for custom applications where you need to manage every service yourself so you mostly see them used for stuff like web stacks.
Single container applications are much easier to run and manage for the end-user and most of the awesome-selfhosted apps are already served as single container images on the docker hub. There is absolutely no need to use compose for any of those because you are not managing every service of the app yourself.
I have a big server with lots of containers running for apps. For example, I have a container for my blog, one for FreshRSS, and even one for Teamspeak. But I only use Compose for one application and that's my own custom one. That one consists of an nginx container, php container, etc. I don't need to dive into the different services of FreshRSS for example, but I do need to for my own custom app.
for a selfhosted service which is a single self-contained process in a single container, is there still a benefit to using compose, and if so, what would that be? genuine question since I'm not providing a compose example for a foss service I made.
Persistence of "mental state" mostly. By setting up a compose, you have a written down notion of things like volumes, environment variables and other elements stored somewhere for the behaviour of the container, that can not be ignored or defaulted if you don't wish it, for when you need to undo and redo a container and default behaviours are important.
While sure, those elements can be set in a loooong ${engine} run... command, it's easy to forget to set up something important or copy and paste an accidental endline. A compose file (plus a sample envfile, if you so wish) helps keep the way to set up variables and state under control. Made much easier now that we have both docker-compose run and podman-compose run.
I find it a lot easier to write out the yaml and save it in a file than to run a command every time, and I hate yaml.