What's the difference between Docker Compose vs. Dockerfile

Question

I have been reading up and learning about Docker, and am trying to correctly choose the Django setup to use. So far there is either:

Docker Compose or Dockerfile

I understand that Dockerfiles are used in Docker Compose, but I am not sure if it is good practice to put everything in one large Dockerfile with multiple FROM commands for the different images?

I want to use several different images that include:

uwsgi
nginx
postgres
redis
rabbitmq
celery with cron

Please advise on what are best practices in setting up this type of environment using Docker.

If it helps, I am on a Mac, so using boot2docker.

Some Issues I've had:

1. Docker Compose is not compatible with Python3
2. I want to containerize my project, so if one large Dockerfile is not ideal, then I feel I'd need to break it up using Docker Compose
3. I am ok to make the project Py2 & Py3 compatible, so am leaning towards django-compose

Answer 1

Dockerfile

A Dockerfile is a simple text file that contains the commands a user could call to assemble an image.

Example, Dockerfile

FROM ubuntu:latest
MAINTAINER john doe 

RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y python python-pip wget
RUN pip install Flask

ADD hello.py /home/hello.py

WORKDIR /home

---

Docker Compose

Docker Compose

• is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications.

• define the services that make up your app in docker-compose.yml so they can be run together in an isolated environment.

• get an app running in one command by just running docker-compose up

Example, docker-compose.yml

version: "3"
services:
  web:
    build: .
    ports:
    - '5000:5000'
    volumes:
    - .:/code
    - logvolume01:/var/log
    links:
    - redis
  redis:
    image: redis
    volumes:
      logvolume01: {}