Pull newest docker images with deployments over API

[valentinschabschneider]

Our current deployment workflow for our test server looks like this:

1. Create coolify application with git integration
2. GitLab pipeline builds latest docker image
3. We call /api/v1/deploy?uuid=<id> from the pipeline

Per default Coolify does not pull already existing images. To work around that we added a custom build Command docker compose -f ./web/docker-compose.coolify.yml pull that forces the deployment to pull the new latest image. This approach broke after version v4.0.0-beta.452 since it always adds --build-arg variables.

Deployment failed: Command execution failed (exit code 1): docker exec mcs0o840808ggkg8kcc4404k bash -c 'cd /artifacts/mcs0o840808ggkg8kcc4404k && docker compose --env-file /artifacts/build-time.env --project-directory /artifacts/mcs0o840808ggkg8kcc4404k/web -f ./web/docker-compose.coolify.yml pull --build-arg ...'
2025-Dec-04 14:50:26.654538 Error: unknown flag: --build-arg 

For now our workaround is setting the following build command: docker compose -f ./web/docker-compose.coolify.yml pull && docker compose -f ./web/docker-compose.coolify.yml build --help
IMO this is stupid. So my question is: Is there a better approach to this?
And if there is none, my suggestion would be to have a flag in the "advanced" configuration to execute a pull for every deployment.

[djsisson]

just add pull_policy: always to your compose and remove the custom command

[valentinschabschneider]

true. thanks for the tip

[valentinschabschneider]

One drawback is that the containers are stopped → images are pulled → and then started again.
This has the consequence that the containers are “down” for longer than necessary. So still not optimal IMO

[djsisson]

coolify does not support rolling updates when using a compose, if you want rolling updates, move your service you are rebuilding to its own resource by pointing directly to the image, you will then get rolling updates, and just place the image resource and your static compose services in same docker network