dev compose setup by TimMeissner · Pull Request #1007 · beyond-all-reason/teiserver

TimMeissner · 2026-02-18T14:23:30Z

This PR introduces a docker compose dev environment for Teiserver so devs can run a full local stack (DB, SMTP, metrics, Grafana, Teiserver, and recoil-autohost) with minimal manual setup. Solves issue #988
I didn't test with podman, not sure if it is fully compatible

Highlights

Added docker-compose.dev.yml with:
- teiserver, postgres, mailhog, victoriametrics, grafana
Added Dockerfile dev stage / target
- Hot-reload capable (although performance on windows is really bad with the mounts)
Added entrypoint automation to:
- wait for DB
- run migrations
- optionally seed fake data (task is now idempotent)
- run Tachyon setup
Added Grafana datasource provisioning and VM scrape config for metrics development
Added Docker helper tasks to mise.toml and README usage docs.

Bootstrapping changes

mix teiserver.tachyon_setup now correctly uses TEI_DB_HOSTNAME for connection instead of defaulting to localhost always by requiring app.start
Refreshed matchmaking engine seed version to be more recent, thinking about making this env variable configurable

CI

Added workflow to build/push both release and dev Docker images to GHCR.
Added a similar workflow to recoil-autohost

Test video

SMTP / metrics

chrome_3HGyONiAEa.mp4

AI Disclosure

I used GPT 5.3-codex and Claude 4.6 Sonet & Opus, mostly for troubleshooting and generating boilerplate AND for the changes to the elixir code that is setting up data, this needs thorough review because i don't know much about elixir yet.

geekingfrog

Some additional notes:

slop machines put useless comments everywhere. Things like

# Set working directory
WORKDIR /app

This all useless garbage, please remove all useless comments that just say what the code is doing. Comments should be to explain the why, not the how. Unless very complex code.

Does the autohost automaticallly download engines? Personally, I would drop everything autohost related for now. That can be a different PR. One can still go rather far locally without a autohost setup.
the commit history is complete garbage and provide no useful info. Either squash everything into one commit (meh), or take some time and care to craft a meaningful commit history with nice commit message to help reviewer and archeologist who try to figure out the reasoning behind some code.

I haven't even try to run anything, there are too many things to fix first. Once it's in a better shape I'll give it a go.

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T18:22:39Z

.github/workflows/docker-publish.yml

+        with:
+          registry: ghcr.io
+          username: ${{ github.actor }}
+          password: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}


what's this github token? Where does that live?

it is autopopulated by github in actions/workflows, no need to set it up in any way.

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T18:23:23Z

.github/workflows/docker-publish.yml

+          push: true
+          tags: ${{ steps.tags.outputs.dev_tags }}
+          cache-from: type=gha,scope=dev
+          cache-to: type=gha,mode=max,scope=dev


Do we really need to push a dev version as well? I'm not convinced

i wanted to setup an environment for bar-lobby and to run the tachyon setup tasks etc. this dev image is necessary and it would be convenient if you didn't have to build it yourself there.

speaking about bar-lobby, i personally would not want to drop the autohost stuff because that was the main driver for doing this. but if you prefer i can extract it to a 2nd pull request, let me know.

@TimMeissner

https://github.com/thvl3/BAR-Devtools

Might accomplish some of the automated setup you need, I found it worked well enough for me to get bar-lobby working

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T18:24:14Z

Dockerfile.dev

+
+# Install hex and rebar
+RUN mix local.hex --force && \
+    mix local.rebar --force


why are these 2 tools needed?

i used other dockerfiles (e.g. the release Dockerfile) as inspiration and it is also installed there, afaik hex is a package manager for elixir that is used to install the dependencies and the other one is for native compiling some libraries? i'll test if it is really required to install it

Edit: went with a totally different approach and reused the main Dockerfile and just added a dev stage, should improve maintainability by a lot

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T18:28:31Z

docker/teiserver/docker-entrypoint.sh

+echo "Waiting for PostgreSQL..."
+while true; do
+  set +e
+  CREATE_OUTPUT=$(mix ecto.create 2>&1)
+  CREATE_STATUS=$?
+  set -e
+
+  echo "$CREATE_OUTPUT"
+
+  if [ $CREATE_STATUS -eq 0 ] || echo "$CREATE_OUTPUT" | grep -qi "already exists"; then
+    break
+  fi
+
+  echo "PostgreSQL not ready yet, retrying..."
+  sleep 2
+done
+echo "PostgreSQL is ready"


No, this is not the responsability of the container running teiserver to check postgres is there. If you want such dependency, compose is there for that.
Also, this is for dev, if teiserver cannot start because pg isn't available, the user can figure out what to do.

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T18:30:26Z

docker/teiserver/docker-entrypoint.sh

+
+echo "Running migrations..."
+mix ecto.migrate
+echo "Migrations complete"


teiserver already does that in the application code.

Yes it does, but if the database is not setup i can't run tachyon setup steps.

mise.toml

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T19:04:38Z

README.md

+For a quick local stack (Postgres, SMTP, metrics, Grafana, recoil-autohost, teiserver), use the compose setup in this repo.
+
+- Linux/macOS: `./docker/start.sh`
+- Windows (PowerShell): `./docker/start.ps1`


ditch this and just put the command to run.

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T19:05:27Z

README.md

+
+The start scripts auto-select `podman` when present, otherwise `docker` (or honor `CONTAINER_RUNTIME` if set).
+
+This starts `docker-compose.dev.yml`, builds the `teiserver` dev image, runs migrations, and sets up fake data plus tachyon OAuth apps.


Drop this, it's going to fall out of sync. "This setup and starts everything that you should need for local dev" is enough.

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T19:06:34Z

.github/workflows/docker-publish.yml

Why do you want to push dev images? I would drop the entire thing

for bar-lobby so you can run one command and have a working setup.

geekingfrog · 2026-02-22T19:08:03Z

lib/teiserver/tachyon/tasks/setup_apps.ex

+  @default_autohost_bot_name "tachyon-autohost"
+
+  defp autohost_bot_name,
+    do: System.get_env("AUTOHOST_BOT_NAME") || @default_autohost_bot_name


Drop that, just hardcode the entire thing. If someone needs a different name/bot, they can do that by themselves.

TimMeissner · 2026-02-22T20:58:08Z

Some additional notes:

slop machines put useless comments everywhere. Things like
# Set working directory
WORKDIR /app
This all useless garbage, please remove all useless comments that just say what the code is doing. Comments should be to explain the why, not the how. Unless very complex code.

Does the autohost automaticallly download engines? Personally, I would drop everything autohost related for now. That can be a different PR. One can still go rather far locally without a autohost setup.

the commit history is complete garbage and provide no useful info. Either squash everything into one commit (meh), or take some time and care to craft a meaningful commit history with nice commit message to help reviewer and archeologist who try to figure out the reasoning behind some code.

I haven't even try to run anything, there are too many things to fix first. Once it's in a better shape I'll give it a go.

sorry i am used to squashing on merge commit so i usually don't write meaningful commit messages. i'll invest some time to improve it and keep it in mind for the future. Thanks for the thorough code review!

Autohost will download engines automatically soon, once the PR is merged. I'll split the autohost stuff to a seperate PR to simplify it.

…t by reusing the existing Dockerfile

…or dev and release to github registry. dev image is published so it can be used by other repos like bar-lobby to start a local environment quickly

…s by adding additional env variables and default values to the config

…server - clean up postgres installation from mise.toml and adjust default env variables for smtp integration

lib/teiserver/mix_tasks/fake_data.ex

…asks to run in docker contexts, make fake generation task idempotent

geekingfrog

I think one last thing I'd like to see is putting everything in the same host network.
Because if I want to run some component, typically teiserver, on the host (with iex -S mix phx.server, which gives me a shell onto the running app, which is super handy), then things like victoriametrics don't work.
I tested that on linux and it works fine, but I'm not sure how/if that would work on windows, do you have any thoughts about that?

geekingfrog · 2026-02-26T09:37:59Z

lib/teiserver/mix_tasks/fake_data.ex

+      end
+
+    if already_has_data do
+      IO.puts("Demo data already present, skipping generation")


nitpick: prefer Mix.shell().info()

TimMeissner · 2026-02-26T16:49:44Z

I think one last thing I'd like to see is putting everything in the same host network. Because if I want to run some component, typically teiserver, on the host (with iex -S mix phx.server, which gives me a shell onto the running app, which is super handy), then things like victoriametrics don't work. I tested that on linux and it works fine, but I'm not sure how/if that would work on windows, do you have any thoughts about that?

Yeah i see that issue as well, the start scripts and accessing everything with the network ip would have solved that problem. I'll give it a thought and try some ideas.

geekingfrog · 2026-02-26T18:16:40Z

If there's no other way than the bash templating then so be it, but that seems rather convoluted tbh. Especially since we can make assumptions for a dev machine, like ports and whatnot.

TimMeissner · 2026-03-21T12:58:39Z

i'll look at the remaining issues next week, didnt forget about it

TimMeissner changed the title ~~docker compose setup to start tachyon stack~~ dev compose setup Feb 18, 2026

TimMeissner marked this pull request as ready for review February 21, 2026 13:01

geekingfrog reviewed Feb 22, 2026

View reviewed changes

TimMeissner marked this pull request as draft February 22, 2026 22:33

TimMeissner added 4 commits February 23, 2026 10:38

Add dev stage to Dockerfile with hot-reload and task execution suppor…

1488c6f

…t by reusing the existing Dockerfile

Add github action workflow to build and publish the docker image(s) f…

8c0f6d7

…or dev and release to github registry. dev image is published so it can be used by other repos like bar-lobby to start a local environment quickly

SMTP configuration can now support local smtp servers without auth/tl…

0f9918e

…s by adding additional env variables and default values to the config

Add docker-compose.yml with grafana, victoriametrics, mailhog and tei…

468a426

…server - clean up postgres installation from mise.toml and adjust default env variables for smtp integration

TimMeissner force-pushed the feature/dev-docker-setup branch 2 times, most recently from d479062 to 4ff9f9f Compare February 23, 2026 19:30

TimMeissner marked this pull request as ready for review February 23, 2026 20:49

TimMeissner requested a review from geekingfrog February 23, 2026 20:51

L-e-x-o-n reviewed Feb 25, 2026

View reviewed changes

lib/teiserver/mix_tasks/fake_data.ex Show resolved Hide resolved

lib/teiserver/mix_tasks/fake_data.ex Show resolved Hide resolved

Fix mix tasks not using config variables like TEI_DB_HOST to enable t…

9aaaa7c

…asks to run in docker contexts, make fake generation task idempotent

TimMeissner force-pushed the feature/dev-docker-setup branch from 4ff9f9f to 9aaaa7c Compare February 25, 2026 20:20

geekingfrog reviewed Feb 26, 2026

View reviewed changes

NortySpock mentioned this pull request Feb 26, 2026

How would I run mix test? thvl3/BAR-Devtools#4

Open

L-e-x-o-n linked an issue Mar 19, 2026 that may be closed by this pull request

[Feature]: podman compose file for local development #988

Open


		The start scripts auto-select `podman` when present, otherwise `docker` (or honor `CONTAINER_RUNTIME` if set).

		This starts `docker-compose.dev.yml`, builds the `teiserver` dev image, runs migrations, and sets up fake data plus tachyon OAuth apps.

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TimMeissner commented Feb 18, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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Highlights

Bootstrapping changes

CI

Test video

SMTP / metrics

AI Disclosure

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TimMeissner commented Feb 26, 2026

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