freshdock documentation

freshdock is a health-gated Docker container auto-updater in a single Rust binary, driven by container labels and environment variables. New here? Start with the quickstart.

The freshdock.dev site covers why freshdock exists and how it compares with Watchtower; this book covers how it works, down to every label, flag, and environment variable.

Getting started

• Quickstart: opt a container in and run the daemon in about a minute.
• Coming from Watchtower?: label and flag translation.
• Troubleshooting: symptom-first fixes for common first-run issues.

Reference

• Configuration: the single source of truth for labels, environment variables (the primary path), and the optional freshdock.toml.
• CLI reference: check, recreate, run, and every flag.
• Scheduling & modes: update modes and cron syntax.
• Compose projects: a Compose stack updated as one unit, with one-shot migrations and depends_on ordering.
• Notifications: webhook, Discord, Telegram, SMTP.
• Health gating & rollback: the recreate lifecycle and image cleanup.
• Lifecycle hooks: pre-update and post-update commands.
• Registry authentication: private registries and credentials.
• Deployment: container, systemd, socket permissions, compatibility.

Project & process

• Project README: overview, install options, capability summary.
• Architecture & roadmap: design, phases, goals, risks.
• Release runbook: how a release is cut.
• Changelog
• Contributing
• Manual test playbooks: maintainer smoke tests.

Runnable example stacks: examples/compose/.