Automating the release stage

After completing the test stage, we next run the release stage, which requires us to perform the following actions:

• Run database migrations
• Collect static files
• Start the application
• Run acceptance tests

The following demonstrates creating a target, called release, in the Makefile:

.PHONY: test release

test:
    docker-compose build --pull release
    docker-compose build
    docker-compose run test

release:
    docker-compose up --abort-on-container-exit migrate
    docker-compose run app python3 manage.py collectstatic --no-input
    docker-compose up --abort-on-container-exit acceptance

Notice that we execute each of the required commands with one minor variation, which is to add the --abort-on-container-exit command to each of the docker-compose up commands.  By default, the docker-compose up command will not return a non-zero exit code should any of the container(s) started by the command fail. This flag allows you to override this and specify should any service fail that was started by the docker-compose up command, then Docker Compose should exit with an error. Setting this flag is important if you want your make commands to fail whenever there is an error.