Using Docker Compose for PostgreSQL

Docker is a great software solution for containerization of other software.

I'm using it for my private services, like

• Teslamate, a logging and visulalization software for Teslas
• NGinx Proxy Manager, a great tool for the management of web services, including certification management
• Ghost, a blogging service
• and many more

Additionally, I use it to test new RDBMS releases, like PostgreSQL.

As I'm much too lazy to drop and recreate containers when I want to update them, I'm using Docker Compose for that. So here's my Docker Compose file to create a Docker container for each PostgreSQL Release since version 12. Here the version 17 part:

services:
  psql_17:
    image: postgres:17
    hostname: psql_17
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: XXXXXXXX
    ports:
      - 65432:5432
    networks:
      - proxiable

You can add a complete part for every version - or the same version, depending on what you want to test. But remember to expose a unique port for each service block. In my case, port 5432 is exposed to 65432.

To upgrade to the latest version available on DockerHub (or somewhere else in the internet - see the "image" part), I only have to execute

# docker compose pull

If there's a newer image, or my configuration changed, I have to (re)start it:

# docker compose up -d

As I'm lazy, I do these commands in one line:

# docker compose pull && docker compose up -d --remove-orphans && docker compose logs -f --tail 30

--remove-orphans means that old parts are automatically removed. And docker compose logs -f shows the logfile right afterstarting.

Please keep in mind: Do not upgrade PostgreSQL containers, e. g. from image postgres:16 to postgres:17, because PostgreSQL needs a specific upgrade path. The easiest way to upgrade to a newer major version is to use pg_dump and pg_restore.