Directly execute server in container?

[twiecki]

I think the docker attach method is discouraged. Ideally I think one would just bring up the containers and have a running server. I think this could be achieved via:
CMD ["psiturk", "-c", "server on"]
(config would need to say to start in live mode).

Then one could post HITs from elsewhere (e.g. local machine).

I can make a PR if you think that's useful.

[mvdoc]

I see what you're getting at, but I think that would be suboptimal for testing because

• users cannot use the debug mode (you need a terminal to get the debug URL)
• users cannot cd to a directory to start psiturk and run a different experiment without restarting everything (not that big of a deal, but it's been very useful for me to quickly switch experiments when testing)

I value the benefit of interactivity of docker attach more than complete automation, but that's based on my personal usage and (perhaps suboptimal) workflow. However, I see how when scaling to more than one instance one would want to bring up the psiturk server automatically.

Then one could post HITs from elsewhere (e.g. local machine).

How would you do that without attaching the container running psiturk?

[twiecki]

I would separate development and production environments, but fair enough. It's easy enough to inherit from your container to add that in. Perhaps the best of both worlds would be to launch into psiturk on the container, and start the server (not sure that's possible though). When you attach you get dropped directly into the psiturk shell.

How would you do that without attaching the container running psiturk?

I would run psiturk locally and submit the HIT pointing to the server/container URL.