docker-gen VS Docker Compose

Compare docker-gen vs Docker Compose and see what are their differences.

docker-gen

Generate files from docker container meta-data (by nginx-proxy)
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docker-gen Docker Compose
7 385
4,365 32,367
0.5% 1.2%
8.4 9.6
22 days ago about 24 hours ago
Go Go
MIT License Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

docker-gen

Posts with mentions or reviews of docker-gen. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-02-25.
  • Hosting Wiki.js behind a jwilder/nginx-proxy
    1 project | /r/selfhosted | 18 May 2023
    Yeah, I usually do if I pass URLs to container. But again, the nginx config is completely auto-generated by docker-gen. Not sure why they don't use the container name, maybe duplicate container names? (if that's possible)
  • Going to reinstall.. need ideas.
    5 projects | /r/selfhosted | 25 Feb 2023
    I've not got around to it, but I've always fancied creating a nice landing page that automatically updates as services come up/down, using the system jwilder created to make nginx-proxy, docker-gen. Could be a fun little project, anyway!
  • Tools for automation and daily tasks
    12 projects | /r/automation | 31 Oct 2022
    https://github.com/nginx-proxy/acme-companion https://github.com/nginx-proxy/docker-gen https://github.com/projectdiscovery/dnsx https://github.com/projectdiscovery/httpx https://github.com/projectdiscovery/mapcidr https://github.com/debauchee/barrier https://github.com/stedolan/jq https://github.com/ddosify/ddosify https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kind https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized https://github.com/motiv-labs/janus
  • Easiest solution for local deployment?
    5 projects | /r/docker | 18 Sep 2022
    Then to make deployment super easy we're using nginx-proxy which uses docker-gen (and the acme-companion for automatic SSL cert generation) to automatically re-configure an nginx reverse proxy to point to your containers.
  • Need help with a flexible configuration for Node and Nginx
    3 projects | /r/node | 14 Sep 2022
    I've now got a setup using docker where the reverse proxy configuration is within the container's configuration (using nginx-proxy, which uses docker-gen). That way I just set the host, path, etc. in my container config, deploy, and the nginx servers are re-configured accordingly. No need to worry about ports and IPs then either.
  • How do you manage and maintain the order of your container ports? It's a bit of a mess on my personal server
    4 projects | /r/selfhosted | 10 Sep 2022
    I use an automated nginx reverse proxy. What this does is setup an nginx reverse proxy which uses docker-gen (follow the advice of setting it up separately). docker-gen listens for docker events such as a container being run, inspects that container for the details it needs (port, host, etc.) then configures the nginx accordingly.
  • docker-gen
    1 project | /r/devopskhan | 26 Oct 2021

Docker Compose

Posts with mentions or reviews of Docker Compose. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-25.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing docker-gen and Docker Compose you can also consider the following projects:

nginx-proxy - Automated nginx proxy for Docker containers using docker-gen

supervisor - Supervisor process control system for Unix (supervisord)

Moby - The Moby Project - a collaborative project for the container ecosystem to assemble container-based systems

LibreNMS-docker - LibreNMS Docker image

janus - An API Gateway written in Go

terraform - Terraform enables you to safely and predictably create, change, and improve infrastructure. It is a source-available tool that codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed, and versioned.

traefik - The Cloud Native Application Proxy

Portainer - Making Docker and Kubernetes management easy.

acme-companion - Automated ACME SSL certificate generation for nginx-proxy

Cloud-Init - unofficial mirror of Ubuntu's cloud-init

awesome-sysadmin - MOVED/ARCHIVED A curated list of amazingly awesome open source sysadmin resources.

k3s - Lightweight Kubernetes