Install Discourse for development using Docker

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I figured out a fix for my problem. It’s a bit of a convoluted, hacky process, but it works. In summary, upgrading to Node.js 20.x.x fixed my issue.

I created a Docker image that uses Node.js v20.x.x instead of the default v18.x.x that the Discourse dev Docker image uses.

I started by creating this Dockerfile:

# NAME: discourse_node20
FROM discourse/discourse_dev:release

# upgrade node to LTS 20.x.x
ENV NODE_MAJOR=20
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
RUN mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
RUN curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key | gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg
RUN echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_$NODE_MAJOR.x nodistro main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install nodejs -y

Then I built the image: docker build -t discourse_node20 - < Dockerfile

Then I updated d/boot_dev’s docker run command to use the discourse_node20 image and not pull discourse/discourse_dev:release since it isn’t being used. Here’s that updated command in d/boot_dev:

# comment the line below out 
# docker pull discourse/discourse_dev:release
docker run \
    -d \
    -p $local_publish:8025:8025 \
    -p $local_publish:3000:3000 \
    -p $local_publish:4200:4200 \
    -p $local_publish:9292:9292 \
    -p $local_publish:9405:9405 \
    -v "$DATA_DIR:/shared/postgres_data:delegated" \
    -v "$SOURCE_DIR:/src:delegated" \
    -e UNICORN_BIND_ALL=true \
    -e NODE_OPTIONS=--max_old_space_size=8192 \
    $mount_plugin_symlinks \
    $ENV_ARGS \
    --hostname=discourse \
    --name=discourse_dev \
    --restart=always \
    discourse_node20 /sbin/boot

From there I was able to successfully d/boot_dev --init, d/rails s, and d/ember-cli giving me a functioning dev environment in Docker 24 and Fedora 39.

I don’t know why Node 20.x.x fixes the issue. Hopefully this is fixed upstream in the main dev image. I’d be happy to contribute a pull request but upgrading a major dependency seems like something beyond just a drive-by PR by me. :smile_cat: Well, at least I’m unblocked for now!