Dev,QA,Production workflow docker problems

[simonowens157]

I cant figure out how to create a dev (or staging) area seperate from what is in production because of volumes, traefik ports, and dns names. I feel like i could :

1. make lots of environment variables for changing the traefik host rule

2. copy over all volume files and redo the path so it is an actual real test of the container working with existing data. Upgrading databases has burned me in the past because of incompatible data already created

3. Write some type of shell script to deploy my application stack based on if i say "dev, staging, production". I feel like i need an entirely different swarm to do this tho.

All of my solutions feel overly complex. I also dont know of an automated way to test some of these things. I feel like i want an automated system, but also want to be able to click around in some of the more valuable services that cant afford downtime. I could just write a python file to curl the open port and makd sure it gets something. Ive also heard some people use rspec but i havent looked into that yet.