Make it easier to deploy lazydocker as part of a container 'stack'

[gggeek]

My need: include a tool to allow the end users to 'monitor this set of containers', as part of an application which is deployed as a set of containers managed via docker-compose

Ideally, I would be running lazydocker as one more container within the 'app' stack.

• no need for lazydocker to 'display' or 'manage' other services/containers/images present on the host, apart from the ones related to the current app
• no need for lazydocker to create containers / modify containers config

So far I have included Portainer as a "self-contained container monitor" solution along with my application stacks, but it seems to

• include too many features that do not apply to my case ('manage' vs. 'monitor')
• not be tailored to monitor a single set of containers running on localhost, as much as monitoring different hosts, and on each manage all container resources

So far I managed to achieve a good part of what I need by:

• adding to my stack a container that can run lazydocker (and docker)
• mounting into it the root dir of my docker-compose file

What is missing, imho:

• documentation: the current readme and docs do not make explicit the differences in behaviour that exist between running lazydocker on the host and running it within a container
• docs or changes to the existing lazydocker container so that it is easier to use it in a way that it can find an existing docker-compose project on the host
• an 'easy way' to allow lazydocker to filter out unwanted images/services/containers by usage of tags

[gggeek]

Other improvements that could be useful when running lazydocker within a container which mounts different data from different host dirs / volumes into separate container dirs:

• a cli option --config-file, to allow the lazydocker config to be in a separate dir from where the binary is executed (or is it home dir of current user?)
• a cli option that would would allow it to go scan for docker-compose in a specific dir, eg. --project-directory (this can be achieved currently by adding --project-directory to commandTemplates.dockerCompose within the lazydocker config file, but it leaves the 'project name' displayed as '$current_dir')

[gggeek]

PS: here is the project in question: https://github.com/gggeek/db-3v4l

[gggeek]

Also: since it seems that lazydocker needs to run the docker executable, for optimal results the default container used to run lazydocker should probably be rebased from using Scratch as starting layer to using f.e. rancher/docker-from-scratch

[davenquinn]

Something along these lines would be awesome, although for me requiring lazydocker to be installed on the host system is not too onerous of a requirement. The key thing that is needed is a way to pass an arbitrary config file (e.g. a -c/--config flag as mentioned earlier).

This is needed as some of my projects have a docker-compose configuration defined in a wrapper script, which must be called by lazydocker instead of docker-compose.

Secondarily, having the ability to hide containers, images, and volumes not bound to a specific docker-compose context would be nice.