[jdsleppy]

I've been very happy doing this:

DOCKER_HOST=“ssh://user@remotehost” docker-compose up -d

It works with plain docker, too. Another user is getting at the same idea when they mention docker contexts, which is just a different way to set the variable.

Did you know about this approach? In the snippet above, the image will be built on the remote machine and then run. The context (files) are sent over the wire as needed. Subsequent runs will use the remote machine's docker cache. It's slightly different than your approach of building locally, but much simpler.

[kosolam]

This approach is akin to the prod server pulling an image from a registry. The op method is push based.

[jdsleppy]

No, in my example the docker-compose.yml would exist alongside your application's source code and you can use the `build` directive https://docs.docker.com/reference/compose-file/services/#bui... to instruct the remote host (Hetzner VPS, or whatever else) to build the image. That image does not go to an external registry, but is used internal to that remote host.

For 3rd party images like `postgres`, etc., then yes it will pull those from DockerHub or the registry you configure.

But in this method you push the source code, not a finished docker image, to the server.