Docker Compose for a Production-Like Local Stack

New engineers used to spend half a day wiring local dependencies. Compose fixed that.

Stack

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: gateway
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: dev
    ports: ["5432:5432"]
    volumes: ["pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data"]

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    ports: ["6379:6379"]

  gateway:
    build: .
    depends_on: [postgres, redis]
    environment:
      ConnectionStrings__Default: "Host=postgres;Database=gateway;Password=dev"
      Redis__Host: redis
    ports: ["8080:8080"]

volumes:
  pgdata:

Rules We Enforce

• No latest tags in compose files checked into git
• Seed data via init scripts in ./docker/init, not manual SQL
• Healthchecks on postgres before gateway starts (depends_on + condition)

Onboarding time: 4 hours → 20 minutes.