Shortcut for “docker run”

16^th Oct. 2024 2 min. read

Docker is one of my daily drivers in my local development toolchain. I mostly rely on it for spawning dedicated development environments, which are tailored to the specific project I’m working on.

I usually add a Dockerfile or docker-compose.yml file rather early to my projects. (Independent of whether I actually use Docker in production.) However, for initial prototyping, or for just briefly trying something in an ad-hoc manner, I created a small shortcut that I find quite handy.

It’s called dckr (for brevity) and it starts a disposable Docker container with the current host working directory mounted into it. So you basically take over the current folder into a container to carry on working on it.

To use the dckr shortcut, you append the image name and (optionally) additional arguments like so:

• dckr node:22 for jumping into a NodeJS REPL
• dckr -p 8080:8080 python:3.12 /bin/bash for launching a shell with a Python runtime and exposing port 8080 on the host

You can define the dckr utility as shell alias (1) or as dedicated shell script (2).

(1) Shell alias

alias dckr='docker run -it --rm --workdir /app --volume `pwd`:/app'

This definition could live in your .bashrc file.

(2) Shell script

#!/bin/bash

docker run \
	-it \
	--rm \
	--workdir /app \
	--volume "$(pwd):/app" \
	"$@"

This script would have to reside in your $PATH. The script file needs to be executable.